Resident Hellsing: Code Iscariot
by Keith B. Real
Summary: Iscariot missed out on Raccoon City, but not to be outdone, Maxwell sends Anderson to Rockfort Island in an effort to strike at Umbrella.
1. Chapter 1

Chapter One

I do not own Hellsing.

**Chapter One.**

Alexander Anderson had to pray to Jesus for the strength needed to refrain from killing every heathen on Rockfort island. His mission was to infiltrate the island as a prisoner, learn what he could, _then_ kill every heathen and monster he came across.

The hardest part had been watching his fellow ragged prisoners be led off one at a time to the infirmary, a place that had become synonymous with death amongst the inmates. He had nothing against the prisoners, heathens they might very well be. To him, they were poor, suffering souls who didn't exactly deserve to be stuck where they were. He would have to answer to the Lord at judgment day for his inaction, he knew.

Anderson could not afford to be sent to the infirmary. The first prick would make it clear to them that he was something other than human and then the jig would be up, as people often said. Keeping his head down and his mouth shut while making sure his eyes and ears were always open, was the strategy he stuck to.

His discipline had its limits. There was a young man amongst the prisoners, perhaps seventeen or eighteen, who didn't belong there. The other prisoners had all been criminals or hard cases, people who had known at least a little something about what they were getting into when they had messed with Umbrella. The boy, Steve was his name, had the look of the innocent about him.

Making it a point to sit next to the boy and offer him some extra food was about the limit of what Anderson could do to help. That and tell him what he wanted to hear about the state of his father, who was being held in another part of the prison.

The desire to offer comfort to the other inmates by way of his extensive knowledge of scripture was a great temptation, but one he resisted. If the guards thought him a leader of any sort, it was off to the infirmary. Once his killing spree began, Umbrella would likely move to burry any information still on the island. He had to gather what he could before then.

One night, at meal time, he prayed briefly for his time of waiting to end. What he wanted was to over hear something that would lead him to some vital piece of information that the Iscariot Organization could use against Umbrella. What he received was a full blown air-strike on the island.

They must have thought he was crazy as he ran outside while the bombs were falling, looking up into the sky as it rained death, laughing and thanking God that the waiting was over and that he could get to the work he was meant for.

He had been impaled by a piece of shrapnel through the stomach as well as burned horribly. Pulling the shard of steel out had been painful and so had the skin sloughing off him as it grew back. "Purified," he said, thinking about all the prisoners he had seen go to the infirmary while he did nothing.

After the strike, something interesting happened. Whatever Umbrella had been cooking up on Rockfort island had been set lose by the attack. The T-virus, the one responsible for the destruction of an American city three months prior, had been released into the air, infecting over half of the prison's population and turning them into mindless, viral zombies.

Anderson had always been sorry he had missed being in Raccoon City. By all accounts, it had been nearly a literal hell on earth. When the zombies came to eat the remaining prisoners and guards, he felt his heart nearly burst with both joy. He had run down to the beach upon seeing the first wave attack a guardhouse, knowing there was a crate hidden beneath a pile of driftwood that held two bayonets and his Iscariot clothes, plain black priest clothes, a collar, and a grey overcoat.

Thanks to God, two bayonets would become many, just as Jesus himself had made enough bread to feed thousands from a mere five loaves. Running back up to the prison, he busied himself slaying the virus carriers that ran across his path. He had felled ten before wandering into a wide open patch of loose dirt, where a rumbling from the ground bellow knocked him off balance.

Thinking it was a gas tank rupturing beneath the ground, he wasn't prepared when the massive worm reared up behind him and dove down, swallowing him whole. At first he had no idea what had happened to him. One moment he was getting to his feet and the next he was surrounded by darkness and sharp teeth that were grinding at his body and forcing him down into a stinking, moist hole.

He regained consciousness after some amount of time, and awoke to the stink of putrid air. Soaked in digestive fluid, making his skin raw and red and he knew that he was going to have to get out soon or be digested. His miraculous ability to regenerate tissue was formidable, but under a constant assault such as being digested, he might succumb.

He still had a firm hold on both bayonets, and after chuckling at how similar his predicament was to the prophet Jonah, he slashed at the worm's stomach, washing himself in putrid worm blood as he hacked and hacked.

Suddenly, everything in the dark, wet stomach was forced forward, including himself. He was back in the thing's short esophagus and soon found himself vomited out onto the ground.

Sitting up, spitting out the gunk that had gotten into his mouth, he watched the worm retreat back into its hole. "That'll teach you, Leviathan," he shouted. It was raining heavily, something he was thankful for as it helped to wash the filth off him. However it meant that he had been in the creature's stomach for much longer than he had wanted to be.

Wondering how the remaining prisoners and guards had faired in their battle without him, he cursed himself for being careless and once again not being there to help those in need, especially when that help involved massacring the undead.

Making his way through an old graveyard, made in the days when the people on Rockfort had cared about burying the dead, he spied a structure to his right. It was the processing cell where new prisoners were held. He remembered seeing a helicopter come in, the kind that normally shipped prisoners the day before and wondered if anyone was in there.

A dim red emergency light illuminated the long corridor as Anderson walked down it and into the holding cell near the back. Fearing nothing, he walked in and saw a desk with a lit oil lamp.

"Who's there?" a female voice said from the prison cell's shadows. It was a brave voice, but there was a hint of fear in it. Anderson grabbed the oil lamp and walked over to the cell, revealing the woman within as she gasped at the sight of him.

She was pretty and athletic looking. She wore red boots, blue jeans and a red vest over a black shirt than showed off her mid-rift. Her brown hair was tied in a high pony tail and she was sporting a lump on the side of her head.

"My name is Father Anderson," he said. "Who might you be, my child?"

"Claire Redfield. Can you get me out of here?"

He grabbed the bar near the lock and tugged, breaking it off its hinge. Eyes wide, Claire took a step back. "What are you?" she asked , bracing for a fight. "That lock was made of iron."

"You might say I'm an humble agent of the Lord's divine wrath," he said, smiling. "I'm not your enemy, if that's what you were worried about."

Still wary, Claire didn't move. "What happened outside? I heard all of this noise and the place was shaking."

"An air strike by the look of it," Anderson said. "It's over now, but Umbrella's little pets seem to have escaped." Judging by the look on her face, she knew what he was talking about. Fear, not confusion was spread across her features. Her mere presence at the prison suggested she wasn't totally ignorant of what Umbrella did behind closed doors. "How did a young lady such as yourself manage to get here of all places?"

"I was looking for my brother at an Umbrella facility in Paris. I guess I tripped an alarm."

"Redfield you said?" Anderson was thinking, trying to remember some reports Maxwell had asked him to read over. "Your brother's name is Chris…a member of STARS?"

Claire's eyes narrowed, perhaps thinking she had been to free with her information. "Yes, and I think if you want me to trust you, you're going to have to tell me a little more about who and what you are. Are you really a priest? How did you open the door so easily? What are _you_ doing here?"

Those were fair questions, ones he didn't mind answering. "I work for a section of the Vatican that's not supposed to exist. I was sent here to masquerade as a prisoner and gather intelligence until the time was right to strike. I was able to rip the door off because I have faith and the Lord is with me."

His forthrightness seemed to relax Claire a little, but she still looked on edge. It was a sad fact that young people had little trust in the church in this day and age. "I'm going to try to get out of here," she said. "You should do the same. I don't know what you've seen out there, but I can guarantee it's worse than you think."

He felt a grin spread across his face and a deep seated feeling of content excitement form in his chest. "Were you in Raccoon City by any chance?"

Claire made a disgusted face. "Unfortunately. I almost didn't make it out."

Anderson clapped his thigh and laughed. "Oh, my dear, you'll have to tell me all about it when you get a chance. I've only read reports. I've never talked to anyone who was there…and you're right, it is bad out there; a regular hell on earth. You'd be wise to stick close to me."

"You're a lunatic," Claire said flatly.

"Ah, but I'm an armed lunatic," he said, holding up a bayonet. "I don't fancy you'd want to take on one of them zombies alone and unarmed, now would you? Let's go. I'll collect my data and then we'll find a way off this hellish rock."

He wasn't much of a charmer, that he knew, but he hoped his honest desire to keep her safe would shine through his antisocial tendencies. In truth, he almost wished he hadn't found her. Alone, he was free to slaughter the heathen monsters of Rockfort, but with someone to protect, he had to be careful.

"Actually," Claire said. "If you're looking to give Umbrella a black eye, I'd be glad to help."

That surprised and pleased him. She was most likely a heathen girl, destined for Hell, but she was brave and she knew what real evil was. Perhaps there was a chance for her soul to be redeemed at the End of Days, and so he would keep her alive so she would have that chance.

He prayed silently, for her soul and the strength to keep her safe as well as get his job done. Once done, he looked up at her. "Let's go."

**To be continued…**


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter Two

**Chapter Two.**

Outside, it was still raining. Claire was soaked to the bone in seconds and Anderson thought of offering her his coat. He didn't, but the thought was there. Movement in the graveyard made Anderson turn his head.

The grey, rotting bodies of five men stood up and were covered in muck. Moaning, they turned their dead faces towards him and Claire while beginning their slow stagger. "Ugh," Claire said. "Those poor people."

A path led around the graveyard and back to the prison. They could easily have made it to the prison yard without fighting the infected corpses, but Anderson took a sharp detour into the cemetery, towards the zombies. "One moment," he said.

He threw one bayonet into the forehead of a zombie as he ran forward. Before the creature fell, he yanked the weapon out and sliced the head from the next one using scissoring motion. He gave the headless body a hard kick, sending it into the other three, which he unceremoniously dispatched as they tried to get their rotting bodies back to their feet.

Claire screamed, making Anderson turn. Two of the creatures had gotten around behind him and forced Claire to dart between the graves, heading for the door to the prison yard. He hurled both bayonets, one piercing a zombie between the ears and the other striking the second one's neck; the rain had obscured Anderson's vision and thrown off his aim.

Finding the door locked, Claire turned as the zombie with the bayonet sticking sideways through his windpipe lurched towards her. She sidestepped it and pulled the bayonet out, kicking the zombie in its bloated stomach, rupturing it and sending putrid black guts spilling down its grey thighs. With a disgusted moan, she drove the bayonet through its eye.

Retrieving the first bayonet, Anderson came over to Claire and got the other one from the skull of the last zombie. "I see you don't scare easily," he said.

"I thought I was done with these stupid things after I left Raccoon," she said, looking down at the corpse. A mixture of pity, disgust, and disdain had come over her face. "This is going to get worse, I can just tell."

Anderson certainly hoped so, but didn't voice his opinion. He reached into his coat and pulled out another bayonet. "Take this," he said. "Until you find something else."

Claire took the bayonet and looked it over. "How many do you have?"

He contemplated saying "As many as the Lord gives me," but didn't. She seemed to be somewhat of a godless person, despite the angel depicted on the back of her red vest. She wouldn't understand. "I've got quite a few," he said. "I can spare them."

"Are these bayonets? How come they have a sharp edge? Aren't bayonets supposed to be used for stabbing?"

He sighed. "I modified them, does it matter? Now what about yon door?"

Claire walked over to it and jiggled the handle. It was a large double door made from cheap metal. Anderson stood in front of it, shunting Claire to the side. He drove a bayonet into the lock, destroying it. "I'll go first," he said quietly.

The stink of a dead body made him turn his head to the left. There was the body of a guard lying there, his arms and face chewed to pieces. His gun was still in its holster. As Claire took the gun and began the odious task of searching the mutilated body for spare bullets, the spotlight in the guard tower nearby snapped on and was followed by the _tat tat tat_ of machinegun fire.

He felt the sting of bullets strike his left leg, and moved to get himself in front of Claire, who had already dived behind a crumbling bit of wall. Squinting into the spotlight, he hurled a bayonet into it, shattering it while Claire came around behind and opened fire on the tower.

"Hey, hey!" a voice that sounded like it was being squeezed through a tight gap shouted. "Hold your fire, I surrender."

Anderson recognized the voice and smiled. "Steven," he shouted. "Stop shooting innocent people and come down here."

Footsteps echoed through the yard from Steve's running down the stairs on the other side of the tower. He came around wearing fatigue pants and a denim vest over a black shirt. Around his neck was a tracking collar that some prisoners wore. "Oh man, am I glad to see you," he said, walking up to Anderson and holding his fist out. He dropped it when it became clear Anderson wasn't going to bump knuckles with him. "Who's the chic?"

Anderson frowned along with Claire. "This is Clare. Claire, this is Steven, a prisoner here."

"Ex-prisoner," Steve said. "And it's just Steve. What's with the new duds?"

Anderson looked down at his clothes and blades. He was glad to see Steve was alive, but wasn't happy about having to provide more explanations. "Didn't I tell you? I'm a priest. I found some of my things down near the beach."

"He's a special agent from the Vatican," Claire said, chiming in. "He was sent here to infiltrate the prison and get dirt on Umbrella."

Anderson shot her a look, but decided there was little harm in Steve knowing who he worked for. Both might end up dead by the end of everything and there wouldn't be a problem. He wanted them to live, but if they didn't, then it was the Lord's wish.

Steve looked Anderson up and down, his eyebrow raised. His confused look turned to one of horror when he saw Anderson's leg. "Oh my God, I shot you!"

Eyes narrowing at the Lord's name taken in vain, Anderson shrugged. "Just a scratch." He tapped the bloody hole in his pant's leg with the end of a bayonet; the wound had already closed and the bullet forced out. "That cannon you were using, does it detach?"

Steve, still looking worried over Anderson's leg, looked up at the tower. "Uh, I don't think so. It's too heavy anyway, I don't think I could carry it."

"Here," Anderson said, handing Steve a bayonet and taking another out of his coat. "This should do until you find something else, like Claire here."

Holding up the blade, Steve looked at it skeptically. "Is this a bayonet? Why's it sharp?"

Without answering, Anderson walked across the prison yard, back towards the mess hall. Beyond it was a building where many guards worked and prisoners were sometimes executed. Anderson was curious as to what was inside and didn't feel like answering stupid questions.

Hearing the footsteps of the two young people behind him, he kept his eyes peeled for attacks from the sides as he went through the door. He would have to trust in their own abilities to keep themselves from being attacked from behind.

There was a flimsy mesh door to his right between the prison wall and the mess hall which also doubled as a bunk area. A hard kick to the mesh door broke the padlock, the door to the building he wanted to investigate was on the other side of the mess hall.

He was about to head through the door when he heard something thump on the other side of the wooden wall. Claire and Steve jumped in surprise while Anderson turned, his curiosity peaked.

"I'll be right back," he said. "Wait here."

He went past them, back through the mesh door and down to the other end of the mess hall where the door was. Neither Claire nor Steve protested; Anderson sensed he might be making them a little uncomfortable.

The inside of the mess hall was just what Anderson thought. It was messy before, but had now become an unmitigated disaster. Blood and spilled food were covering the broken furniture and overturned benches. The six rotting prisoners scattered about all turned their grey, peeling faces towards him and approached with their arms raised.

Anderson decided to make quick work of them, what with Claire and Steve left to their own devices. Leaving them might have been foolhardy, but he felt confident they could take care of themselves for five minutes without him around.

There was a whir of bayonets, blood, and violence. It was short, too short, Anderson thought as he made his way into the sleeping quarters where the stench of human rot was thickest. There were many bodies slumped on the beds, those that had been to sick to avoid being eaten.

Towards the back, near the showers, was a dead guard with two machine pistols in holsters by his hips. Anderson picked them up and looked out the window where Steve and Claire were talking in whispers beneath the eaves of the mess hall. He hoped they weren't planning on doing something sinful with one another, but by the looks on their faces it was the last thing on either's mind.

He tapped on the window with the tip of a bayonet which gave them both a scare. Smiling, he broke the glass with the blade. "I found something for you," he said and picked up the two machine pistols. He held them through the opening and was amused when Claire roughly handed Steve her pistol and collected the machine weapons herself.

"Thanks," she said. "Did you have your fun?"

"No," he said. "These rotting vessels are little more than trash, a byproduct. I'm hoping the engineered freaks turn out to be more fun."

"Ha," Claire said, her eyebrow raised. "I'm sure you'll think so when you meet one."

"I'll be right out," he said, deciding not to goad the girl any further.

He was back in the destroyed mess hall when he heard the low growl of an animal and Claire shouting to Steve, telling him to get back. Slowly, he made his way to the door, listening to the sounds of battle.

Shaking his head and chastising himself, he burst through the door and leapt the railing of the porch. He was at the padlocked door when he heard the high pitched death yelp of a dog.

Claire looked quickly to him as he came close. Steve was behind her, his pistol pointing down the corridor made by the mess hall and the prison wall. A dead Doberman lie not ten feet away, patches of its skin were missing and its entrails were hanging out.

"There's more of them," Claire said. "At least two."

"Save your bullets," Anderson said, walking in front of them down the dirt path. He could see where the dogs had chewed holes in the mesh opening beneath the building. A large swath of blood leading from outside in, suggested they had been dragging their meals beneath to eat. "Come out, come out," he said, tapping the wall with a bayonet, wondering what the looks on Steve and Claire's faces were like. "Here, doggie."

Something black and smelling like sour meat bolted out of the hole, past Anderson. He backed up quickly, wanting to keep himself between the animal and his companions. The dog jumped at him only to be skewered by a bayonet though its head.

The other had opted to sneak out, sizing up the situation and crouching near the entrance. Anderson threw the bayonet in his left hand through the dog's skull, pinning it to the ground and killing it.

He listened, hearing only Claire and Steve's breathing. He supposed they had much more to fear than he did after all. "Sounds like that's the last of it," he said, retrieving the blade.

Fear was still on their faces. With their weapons, they could have defeated the dogs themselves and so he knew it was him they were scared of. They probably thought he was a religious fanatic who would kill them for being heathens. While that wasn't completely untrue, he was forced to consider the fact that he might be showing off a little bit too much.

"Thanks," Claire said. "But I'm not sure we absolutely _have_ to exterminate everything on this island."

"Maybe not tonight, no," Anderson said, looking up at the sky, feeling the rain lighten. "But this place will have to be cleansed, lest the disease spread."

"We're on an island," Steve said. "Like, a remote one. This place just needs another good bombing."

Anderson sighed, praying that he found a way off the island soon. He'd send these two on their merry way and then do his work. There was likely more than one way off the island, and even if there wasn't, Maxwell would wonder what was taking so long, eventually, and send someone to pick him up.

"I've changed my mind about you two," he said, and saw their faces turn once again to terror. "We'll make leaving our first priority," he added quickly to calm them. "I have little to fear from this place, but you two don't belong here at all."

"I'm staying," Claire said. "At least until I find something to use against Umbrella. No offense, but you don't seem like the type who makes things public."

Anderson snorted, although Claire had a point. Any info he dug up on Umbrella would be made public in order to attack them above the board. The information would also be used to attack them covertly and with violence.

"Have it your way," Anderson said. "I'll give your pieces their last rites if something happens to you. Follow me then."

He walked past the two of them and opened the door into the other half of the prison. Steve looked as though wanted to say something, but held it.

**To be continued…**


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter Three

**Chapter Three.**

Three rotting corpses wearing green prisoner suits turned and came lurching towards them as Anderson opened the door. He heard Claire and Steve make startled sounds and back up, but his interest was on the other side of the zombies behind a chain link fence.

A guillotine made from old wood and cheap steel was sitting behind the fence, covered in dark stains. The blade looked rusty and dull, and he felt as though the guards of the prison had gotten the fate they deserved.

He sliced the head off the middle zombie as it lunged and wondered if he wasn't being foolish to think of the prisoners as his fellows. He had spent time with him but had he ever really been a prisoner? More like a lion penned up with sheep that could leap the fence at any time and eat the Shepard. He thought he had much to atone for in not eating sooner.

Another stab and a quick slice brought the other two zombies down. "Is this where everyone went?" Steve said, stepping around Anderson to look at the guillotine.

"Many, I'm sure," Anderson said, walking between two buildings with the intent of entering the one on his left. Claire and Steve didn't tarry, but kept close to Anderson as he opened the door into the building.

The interior reminded Anderson of a modern prison. The walls were neutral colored and plain, clean even. In front of him in the corridor was a metal detector, which he stepped through, knowing no one was going to come out and stop him. As soon as he did, an alarm went off and steel shutters came down over the windows in the hallway, blocking the view of the zombies on the other side. A female monotone voice came out of a speaker telling him to step back through and place all metal objects in a bin began to play.

Anderson ignored it and moved around the corner and saw that a steel door had come down in the middle of the hall, blocking his path. Annoyed, he walked back to the mechanism that had triggered the security system and shoved both of his bayonets into it as far as they would go.

Sparks flew, making Claire and Steve back up and cover their faces. Anderson felt his teeth clench as electricity shot up his weapons and into his arms. With his heart beating erratically, he drove the blades in deeper, finally breaking something important enough to reverse the security measures.

The current stopped flowing through him, his heartbeat returned to normal, and the shutters and door rose back up. "That tickled a bit," he said, seeing Claire and Steve's pale faces out of the corner of his eye. The sound of glass breaking took his attention back to the hall, where the zombies from the yard outside had come crashing through.

He went into the hallway to see eight rotting prisoners getting to their dead feet. Stepping on the broken glass, they came at him, only to be cut down with ease. He hoped dearly that he'd run into a mutant soon. The zombies were even less of a threat that vampire-created ghouls and were becoming boring.

Claire and Steve where whispering behind him, likely disturbed over seeing him electrocuted. They made him remember why he preferred working by himself.

The hallway led to an office with a computer, which Steve stepped around him to investigate. "I'll bet there's all kinds of stuff on this," he said.

Anderson leaned against the wall and watched Steve as he typed. He figured now would be a good time to send a report to Maxwell and let him know about the air raid. He noticed Claire was staring at him, and tried not to smile. The suspicion was easy to read on her face, but there was something else there he couldn't place. It was a kind of loathing, but perhaps not for him directly. From the confident way she stood, he guessed she might not like the idea of depending on him for protection. She had escaped Raccoon City after all, perhaps she really didn't need him.

"Looks like it's just prisoner files…mostly nobodies who got on Umbrella's bad side," Steve said. "I'll put it on a CD anyway." Steve popped in a blank disc he found in a drawer and began moving files. "There," he said once he'd finished. "Here, Claire."

Claire took the CD and pocketed it, looking at Anderson as though expecting an objection. He didn't offer one. Prisoner logs didn't interest him, all he wanted to do at the moment was check his e-mail.

"Are you done?" he asked, moving over to the computer and leaning his two bayonets against the desk.

"Uh, yeah," Steve said.

"Good," Anderson said, typing away. He composed a message that to anyone outside the Vatican's Section 13 would look like the ravings of a religious lunatic, but was actually a complex code.

"What did you send?" Claire asked.

"A report," he said. He had also asked Maxwell to send someone along, as he was a little tired of having only Claire and Steve for company. There some other people in Iscariot who had been sorry they had missed out on Raccoon and would never forgive him if he didn't bring them in.

"Did you think to call for help?" Claire asked. "We're going to need to leave sometime."

"Don't worry your little head, child," Anderson said. "Besides, you wanted to stay and play spy, so relax and enjoy yourself. Don't worry about leaving so soon."

He walked past her, amused at the look on her face at his suggestion that she try and have some fun. Leading them back the way they had come, they found that the yard where Steve had first fired upon them from the tower was now being prowled by zombies. Some were wearing prisoner clothes and some dressed as guards, but a few were naked, emaciated corpses.

"One moment," Anderson said, running at the nearest one and impaling its head with a bayonet. A little over a dozen had made their way into the courtyard and had spread out, but were all coming together and converging on the food.

Steve and Claire had to open fire while Anderson was busy near the tower decapitating a stray guard. The door they had come in from the first time was ajar, explaining to Anderson just how the zombies had gotten in.

There was another door on the prison's south side, where there was an inundation for a shield-shaped object. He found the door locked as he made his way over to it, Steve and Claire's shouted echoed in his ears and one of their bullets, a stray, zinged past his head.

Driving a bayonet into the seam of the door, he broke the lock and it swung open with a groan. Panting and footsteps from behind preceded someone pounding on his back. Turning, he found himself facing an angry Claire Redfield. "We could have died you know!" she shouted up at him. "Not all of us are, are…whatever you are."

Smiling, he looked her up and down and then over at Steve, who was panting and pale, but otherwise uninjured. "You're both fine, by the Lord's grace. Don't sell yourselves so short."

Laughing at her deepening scowl, he went through the open door and towards a wooden bridge that spanned a gorge. Just as he expected, two pairs of footsteps followed behind.

**To be continued… **


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter Four

**Chapter Four.**

The bombing had damaged the bridge, but it was still traversable via a smaller footbridge that had been built along side the main. They passed a burning jeep parked on the edge of a gap in the main bridge; the arm of a burnt corpse was flopped over the door as evidence of the driver's last attempt to escape his death.

The bridge ended at the other side of the cliff where steel steps ascended up the rock and ended at the foot of a concrete structure that Anderson took to be the military facility. He'd been briefed a little bit before leaving Italy on the island facility's layout and knew that there was a mansion of sorts north of the structure they now faced.

More boring zombies were stumbling down the path leading to the mansion towards them. These appeared to be the diseased remains of construction workers, although there was one wearing the tattered remains of a military uniform.

"Which way would you two like to go?" Anderson asked, as the dead shuffled nearer. "That's where the army lives and down that way is a fancy house." He pointed towards the mansion with a bayonet and held it up, letting a zombie wearing a yellow construction helmet get close enough to impale through the eye.

Claire stepped around Anderson and raised one of her automatics. Firing in short, controlled bursts, she downed the zombies that were still coming towards them. "New rule," Claire said. "All the zombies have to be dead before we start talking about things, got it?"

He sighed. She had done fine taking them down, she had nothing to be upset about. "Fine, fine," he said. "Now, which way?"

She looked at both the base and into the gloom towards the mansion. The rain had stopped and a thick fog had moved in, obscuring visibility. Steve was standing behind them, shuffling his feet. "Since it's here, let's check this building first," Claire said, gesturing towards the base.

"Fine, then," Anderson said. "I'll look that mansion over while you do that."

"What?" Claire said. "We're splitting up?"

"You've got enough bullets between the two of you to take down every zombie on this island," Anderson said. "If you're careful, that is. We'll cover more ground if we're split and be off of here all the faster."

Steve stepped forward, a sudden confidence drawn over his face. "He's right, Claire. We can cover more ground if we split. We might even move a little faster than him."

_Doubtful, _Anderson thought. He had been going slow before he met them because he was having fun. Their arrival made him keep his pace slack, so as not to leave them behind. As of now, he intended to go through the mansion in quick order, killing its undead occupants as fast as he could. If he found a mutant, he might take his time, but the professional in him was now taking over. This mission had to be completed before too long.

"I want to go on the record," Claire said. "I don't think this is a good idea, but if you think this will speed things up, we can try it. We'll meet back her in an hour."

"God be with you then," Anderson said, and walked towards the mansion, muttering a prayer for the two youths. He heard Steve say "C'mon" and lead Claire through a steel side door into the military facility.

Steve's eagerness troubled him. Part of them thought he wanted to go off and sin with Claire, but his mind was more practical than that. Products of a modern, sinful world they may be, but they didn't seem like the frivolous types, not Claire at least. No, it was more like his displays of inhumanity had unnerved the boy and Steve now no longer trusted him anymore than Claire did.

The situation depressed him greatly. He was a priest for God's sake, how could they not trust him? Hadn't he been protecting them all this time? As if they even needed it. Claire shot like a pro and had survived Raccoon City; she was far from dependant on him for her life. Yet still, he had made life a little easier for her, broken her out of jail, and still she regarded him with suspicion.

_This is how far we've come,_ he thought to himself. No one trusted the church these days. Too many molesters, heretics, and non-believers had been having their public say for too long.

Shaking the thoughts from his head, he knew there was nothing he, Anderson, could do. Public relations was simply not what God had sent him to do. Perhaps in the days when public relations meant killing those who didn't agree he would have been the PR master, but not in this day and age. His job was to hack things to bits and thinking of other things wasn't going to help his sanity in the least.

The space between the side of the military base and the cliff was narrow. Guardrails had been put up along the edge and the ground reinforced with wood. In front of him, about fifteen yards, was a set of stone steps leading up to an archway. The stone was white and expensive looking. He had heard somewhere, likely at some intelligence meeting, that nearly everything Umbrella had built was high class and gaudy in some way.

Something thumped on the guardrail behind him. Before he could turn to see what it was, something else thudded on the rail in front of him. A puss-yellow, two digit hand had gripped the railing and was stretching and flexing in an easy effort to pull its owner up.

Like a man on a bungee cord, the creature flew up from over the edge and landed on the walkway with a heavy thump. Behind him, the same thump, making him surrounded.

The thing before him had once been human. It stared at him blankly with its emaciated corpse face, its bloodshot eyes regarded him with detached aggression. The arm it had used to spring up from the cliff bellow seemed to be its only functional one, the other nothing more than a withered, underdeveloped, stump that hung at the creature's side.

The amount of muscle and tendon in its good arm made the creature look lopsided, the head sunken down near the chest and off to the side. Anderson smiled, glad he had finally met something more dangerous than a zombie. As he was about to bolt forward and shove a bayonet into the creature's deformed face, something hit him in the center of the back hard enough to knock him forward onto his face.

It hurt, but he didn't think the creature had broken anything. Had he been normal, the blow might have stunned him enough to allow the creatures to beat him to death, but that wasn't the case.

As hard blows began to rain down on his back, he laughed bitterly. "That's it?" he shouted, his face striking the floor, making his nose bleed. "Oh, please Lord don't let this be all they've got."

He rose to his feet, still being struck by the monsters' elastic arms. They truly were marvels of twisted surgery, their arms stretching to three times their normal length only to snap back again like whips.

His bayonet rose to meet the arm of the one in front as it attacked, splitting the appendage down the middle and making the creature howl, its dullard face contorting in anger.

A hard thump to the back of his head made his skull crack and his vision blank for a moment. Suddenly angry, he turned and threw a bayonet at the monster behind him, impaling it through the face. Before it hit the ground, he tossed his other bayonet into the first creature, killing it as well.

Getting his blades back, he decided that the things needed some work. Perhaps a blade on their stretching arms would do the trick. While certainly a threat to a human's well-being, a team of armed men would've taken the creatures down in short order.

Looking back towards the base, he wondered how Steve and Claire would fare against such creatures. Perhaps he had sinned in sending them off alone, but they had seemed glad to be rid of him. Also, without him around they would likely become more alert to danger, thus making them even safer. Expecting him to protect them was folly, as even he couldn't foresee all dangers. A zombie playing opossum, a surprise strike from one of the creature's he had just killed from out of the shadows, any of a number of surprises could fly past him and kill them.

They'd be looking for that kind of thing now, and knowing Claire the way he did, he felt confident they would all be back at the bridge in an hour.

**To be continued… **


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter Five

**Chapter Five.**

The mansion was indeed a fancy one, although the bombing had detracted from some of its luster. The entrance he had used was a side one, the main having been blown down by a bomb. There was another side entrance on the other end, but where it led, he didn't know. Anderson knew there was an airport nearby, but he wasn't sure where.

Wondering what he would find inside the building, he went up the steps and through the door. It was dark inside, the only light coming from a computer in the large main room's center and small emergency bulbs near the pillars holding up the staircase towards the back. All sorts of doors were beneath the stairs and he could see two up top.

There were no creatures in the room, making a kind of fear creep through Anderson. Was it possible that he had selected the boring path and Claire and Steve were now battling for their lives against masses of undead and mutants? No, there had to be something nasty behind at least one of the doors.

The ones on the ground would be his best bet, he guessed. Before going in, he checked the computer at the desk. Maxwell would likely want what was on it, so he quickly set to work e-mailing what looked to be important files to Vatican agents.

Once that extremely boring task was complete, he went through a door that followed a hallway down to a dead end. There were more locked doors and one metal shutter, but he used his considerable talents of violence to open them. To his dismay, all he found was more zombies. Soldiers who had hidden or somehow survived the air raid, construction workers, and what looked to have been a doctor, all fell before his bayonets with ease.

The rooms he had cleared contained paintings and furniture, desks and books. One had been a kind of mini-war museum. It was in that room that he had found something extremely puzzling. A button he had pushed had activated a proctor, one of the old time ones, which showed a short, yet disturbing – even by his standards—film.

It started of showing a bonnie young boy, blond and blue eyed, pulling the wings off a dragon fly over a terrarium filled with swarming ants. With a look of sedate pleasure on his face, the boy dropped the crippled bug into the terrarium and watched as the ants swarmed it.

Someone stood up from behind the boy and came over, a girl, likely the boy's twin. She was gorgeous, like something out of a painting. She looked at the boy and then down at the dragonfly as it was torn to bits. When her gaze rose to the projector, Anderson didn't like what he saw.

Her eyes blazed with a cold, blue intelligence that he had seen in only one other person in his lifetime. For a moment, he wondered if they might be the same person, but before his mind could explode with the implications of that, he decided that wasn't the case. This girl, whoever she might be, had an evil in her that wasn't present in that other woman, heathen though she might be.

Laughing, he wondered how he could have, even for a second, mistaken the witch-woman on the projector for Integra Hellsing. Integra Hellsing was a filthy protestant, but she still believed in God. The demon-child he was seeing on the screen, if she was even alive still, seemed like the type to think she _was_ God. What she had to do with Umbrella, he wasn't sure. Maybe he would find out and maybe he wouldn't. He did wonder who the hell had been filming them, though.

On his way back into the main hall, he heard the snap of a rifle and the sting of a bullet striking his shoulder. He turned to see what could only be a man who fancied himself English nobility standing at the top of the stairs. He was dressed in white pants and a red shirt, decked out with gold frills and white laces. His blond hair and blue eyes marked him as the adult form of the male child he had just watched mutilate a bug on the old video.

"Stop right there," he said in a high pitched voice laced with assumed authority. "Unless you'd like another."

Anderson wondered if he had even noticed his shot had little effect. Already the bullet had been pushed out and had tumbled down his sleeve to the floor. "I don't believe we've met," Anderson said.

"Silence, peasant," the man said. "I am Alfred Ashford, commander of this facility and head of the Ashford family."  
Where had he heard the name Ashford before? At a meeting…the Ashford's were one of the families that had founded Umbrella. He had stumbled across a big fish it seemed; if Alfred were to be killed or captured it would be a grand thing indeed.

"Father Alexander Anderson at your service," he said. Technically he was a paladin, but introductions weren't that important to him. "You're a sinner, Alfred Ashford. Are you sure it wasn't God himself that dropped bombs on your little installation?"

"God?" Alfred said, as though the idea were absurd. "We make our own Gods, Father Anderson. Soon the Ashford family, one of the foremost families in the world, will take its rightful place as the true Lords of the earth. People like you will be irrelevant."

He was coming down the stairs, but had stopped, perhaps realizing his bullets weren't working. Anderson was having some difficulties of his own. This man was the worst kind of sinner and heathen. He deserved death, but capturing him would be far more damaging to the rest of Umbrella's sinners. Ashford also needed the fear of God put into him, but how to do that most effectively?

"Put down that gun and come with me, you little imp," Anderson said. "You're going to take me to the airport and we're going to fly ourselves off to an inquisitor so he can ask you some questions."

Alfred laughed, a high pitched tittering sound that nearly made Anderson lose it and send a bayonet through his slender neck. "You're delusional. Die."

He fired, hitting Anderson in the heart. It hurt, he felt his left side go numb, but his body quickly remedied the problem and he felt nothing but a tingle after a moment. Blood was showing on his coat, making it clear to Alfred that no trick of body armor was in play. "Shooting a priest in the heart…tsk, tsk, Alfred. As if you haven't done enough to anger and blaspheme our heavenly Father."

Walking up the stairs, Anderson meant to pry the gun from Alfred's hands and use the barrel to bind his arms behind his back. He was strong enough for it, and it might just do the trick in scaring the urine from the fop's bladder.

Whimpering, Alfred fired again, this time getting Anderson between the eyes. He had underestimated the weapon's caliber, but couldn't think well enough to chastise himself. The world went black and he felt himself falling backward. The bullet lodged in his frontal lobe had made him essentially brain dead, a bizarre experience that he would remember little of once he woke up again.

When he did, he blinked and removed his glasses to wipe the blood and bits of bone off. Alfred was gone, likely to one of the rooms upstairs as Anderson hadn't seen any footprints in his blood that lay splattered behind him.

Standing up, he decided this was a lesson against pride. If his head was ever blown up or taken off, the rest of his body could be done away with, resulting in his death. No zombie was going to accomplish such a task, but something else, something like a heathen with a big gun and a good eye, just might.

He prayed for forgiveness, and headed up the stairs, taking a right up a smaller flight. He would find Alfred and atone for his own arrogance by teaching the young man a lesson about his.

**To be continued…**


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter Six

**Chapter Six.**

Alfred had in fact stepped in Anderson's blood. The red carpet of the stairs had concealed it from Anderson's sight at first, but once his brain had healed up, he now saw the faint trail. It led through a study and down a short hallway to a locked door with empty depressions meant to hold a pair of pistols.

It likely opened by some special lock trick, but Alfred had some kind of master key that allowed him to run about as he pleased while others needed to complete insane puzzles to get anywhere in the mansion.

Anderson had a master key in the form of bayonets and inhuman strength. With the door down, he followed it into an office with a large window behind the desk on the other end. It was raining again and a flash of lighting streaked across the sky in the distance.

Alfred's footsteps were fading, but they led to a spot in the wall where, through more manhandling, Anderson managed to open the secret door disguised as a bookcase.

As if on cue, the window shattered and one of the ropey-armed creatures stood on top of the desk, winding its arm back to strike. Scowling, Anderson stepped into the opening of the passage as the creature's arm flew at him, hitting the wall and knocking some books off the case.

He waited a few moments and sure enough, the creature waddled its way in on its thin legs. A quick stab and a twist into the creature's face killed it, leaving Anderson free to go down the dark, cobwebbed hall which through old age and dilapidation, opened up outside prematurely.

Alfred had to have come this way, Anderson decided as he stood in a ruined courtyard and looked up at the mansion proper. It was tower-like in its design and made him think of vampires. It was the kind of place such a monster might enjoy dwelling in, but he was certain the only monsters in it now were man-made ones, or men themselves.

More rubber-arm creatures greeted him as he ascended the steps to the house above. He threw two bayonets at the ones that had come out from behind low, broken stone walls. A third, which had swung down from the deck above, required a stiff punch to its face to send it reeling backward, giving Anderson enough time to draw another bayonet and throw it into the monster's brain.

He collected two blades and left the third. If Alfred somehow got past him, it would be useful for the man to see his handiwork.

Anderson found it strange as he went up and into the mansion that this section of it looked more run down than the rest. Remembering that it took a secret passage to get here, solved the mystery. It was simply because no servants had been admitted beyond this point in quite some time.

Inside was dark, but he made his way up the stairs to the top floor and into a hall which split two ways and rounded corners on either side. Going right, he found one opened into a woman's bedroom. Dolls and frilly things were all over the place, but what had Anderson's attention was the red shirt Alfred had been wearing and the door on the other end of the room.

It was another secret door. It had turned sideways, but when facing the right way, appeared to be a stone relief. Anderson could see movement on the other side of the door, and entered, ready to bring a bayonet up in front of his face to block a bullet if need be. "Alfred," he said, walking in.

The light came on, revealing a beautiful blond woman in a violet dress standing on top of the bed and holding a rifle. She was wearing long white gloves and a frilly white strip of fabric around her throat. "Halt," she said in a high, refined voice. "You'll defile this place no further."

Making a cross in front of him with his bayonets, he prepared to block or dodge her shots, and take her down if need be. As he did so, the question of Alfred's location entered his mind. "Who are you?" he asked. "Where's that heathen boy?"

"I am Alexia Ashford," she said. "And that man is my brother. You'll leave him alone of you know what's best for you."

The dress was covering the woman's feet, but he could see miniscule bloodstains on the carpet. Then there was the coat in the other room…something was amiss. Studying her carefully, he thought he saw it. "Tell me, missy, do you believe in God?" He didn't care what she believed, he just needed to see something.

"You silly priest," she said, her Adam's Apple bobbing up and down slightly beneath the white fabric. "Just die."

The bullet came at him, which he deflected with a casual stroke. He wasn't being careless anymore, and that was a man standing before him dressed as a woman.

He, she, it, kicked something at the foot of the bed, casing the mechanical grind of gears to fill the room. The bed jerked upward as a spot on the ceiling opened.

"Alfred Ashford, you cross-dressing fiend, stop that bed this instant!" Anderson shouted, running forward.

He didn't get shot this time, only struck in the nose with the butt of a rifle. It was enough to knock him backward, Alfred Ashford being stronger than he looked. As the bed rose, Anderson looked up to see Alfred, dressed as a woman—his sister perhaps—pull out some sort of device and push a button on it.

Detonation sequence activated. All personnel evacuate, echoed a loud voice from distant speakers. It repeated itself, making Anderson curse loudly.

There was no way he was going to get at Alfred in anything resembling a timely manner. Remembering the files he had sent, he decided that he had done enough damage for one day and ran back out the way he had come.

Finding nothing in his way, he ran at full speed back to the bridge where he was supposed to meet Claire and Steve. Having been unconscious for a time, he wasn't sure how close he was to the hour time limit.

If he wasn't late, he hoped the two would have the sense to come running when they heard the warning over the speakers. _And that they're not dead,_ he thought, now out of the mansion and making his way towards the military installation.

They weren't there when he reached the spot by the cliff. The alarm was still blaring, but hadn't begun issuing a countdown quite yet. He didn't know if it ever would though; the whole place might simply blow up and finish what the bombers had started.

There was another problem; he didn't know where the airport was or even if there was anything down there to take him off the island. Sighing, he went through the door to the installation thinking he might catch up with what was left of Claire and Steve and lead them in prayer before they met their maker.

Under the loud warning message, he heard the arrival of a freight elevator to his left as he stepped out into the open yard. Turning, he saw the door open to reveal Claire, sweating profusely, covered in dirt and spattered blood. "There you are," she said. "It looks like this place is going to blow. Follow me."

Anderson got on the elevator with her and she pushed the button sending it down. "What happened to Steven?" Anderson asked.

"He's prepping our ride. When we heard the alarm, I came up here hoping to get you," she said, not looking at him.

"How thoughtful of you," he said, smiling. "I sent some rather incriminating documents to some people, so that should cheer you a bit. I reckon we've done a fair bit of damage today. Does Steven know how to fly a plane?"

Claire shrugged. "He didn't seem thrilled."

"I'm sure he'll come through," Anderson said.

"Did you have your fun?" Claire asked.

He didn't speak for a second and was thinking about not doing so at all, but decided to keep things friendly. "This was a disappointment," he said. "All I found was a few mutants, more zombies, and a cross-dresser."

Claire looked at him, her eyebrow raised. "A cross-dresser?"

Relating the tale of his meeting with Alfred Ashford, he was glad to see she found it as bizarre as he did. "In short," he said. "I'll be glad to take my leave of this silly place."

Heinkel and Yumiko—or at least Yumie—would be disappointed when they landed. Perhaps they would find a stray creature, but it would likely only serve to show them how much fun they had missed. He'd apologize later. This disappointment had left him with the intense desire to sleep and forget it.

**To be continued…**


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter Seven

**Chapter Seven. **

The airplane Steve and Claire had found and gotten to run was a large cargo plane. Not only was the plane's engine running, but the bridge from one side of the port to the other had been raised, allowing the plane access to the sea so it could take off. The two had not only done well, but had gone above and beyond his expectations.

A mini-elevator took them to the plane's side door just as the automated voice warning them of impending doom told them they had five minutes until the place exploded.

"Oh," Claire said, whispering to Anderson before they stepped into the plane. "Steve was sent here with his father…he had to, uh…."

"I understand," Anderson said, getting in the plane.

"Did you find him?" Steve said, turning around in the pilot's seat. Anderson could see the marks of grief on his face, but his need to survive had overridden his emotions.

"She did," Anderson said. "Fly us away, Steven."

"Right."

Claire and Anderson sat down after Claire closed the door. The plane's engine revved louder and they began moving forward. Looking out the window, Anderson saw that it was getting close to daylight. He wondered where they would go to land, but decided it didn't matter. Once they put down out to sea after being clear of the island, it would be a simple enough matter to radio his own people and arrange a pickup. They would likely question Claire and Steve, but it would be nothing serious.

The plane rocked up and down with the waves, but began to pick up speed and rise into the air. They heard the sound of the explosion from behind, the force of which made the plane jostle somewhat, but nothing worse than regular turbulence.

As they breathed sighs of relief, something thudded in the back of plane, in the cargo hold. "What was that?" Steve asked.

"Did something hit us?" Claire asked.

"I don't know, but the back hatch is open," Steve said, tapping at light in front of him, one of dozens.

"I'll go shut it," Anderson said, standing. "If I fall out, I'll live. You wouldn't."

He got no objection from either of them and went back after fighting the somewhat complex door mechanism. Once in the cargo hold, he heard it seal shut behind him. A minor inconvenience under normal circumstances, he thought as he saw what had caused the noise standing at the other end of the open hold. However, it appeared as though he had stepped into some _unusual _circumstances.

At the other end of the plane, near the rushing wind and the outside, was a humanoid standing roughly four meters tall, give or take. It had white eyes, grey skin, naked and sexless, one of its hands was tipped with sharp, bone claws while the other was a deformed, spiked club.

"A monster," he said happily, drawing two bayonets. "Ah, thank God. I thought I would never see the likes of you today."

It said nothing as it came forward, its blank, white eyes fixed on him and him alone. Anderson could tell by its hands that it had been made for nothing but destruction.

A grin spread across Anderson's face. Here was a worthy opponent and this was such a simple situation. Kill or be killed. All he had to do was destroy the thing in front of him, the thing that by anyone's standards, Catholic or heathen, needed killing.

He threw a bayonet at its heart and ran at the creature before the blade had even sunk into its thick hide. Small traces of blood ran out the hole as Anderson drove his second bayonet into the monster's stomach and sliced downward.

The creature, seemingly feeling none of this, struck Anderson in the ribs with its clubbed hand, breaking bone and rupturing organs as it sent Anderson hurling into the side of the plane.

The taste of blood was in his mouth and he felt pain beyond belief, but this was what he had wanted. Finally, here something that wouldn't die in three seconds and could hit back. While he was ecstatic, he knew he couldn't afford to mess around with the monstrosity. It might kill or incapacitate him, thus taking Steve and Claire down as well.

Still gripping two bayonets, he threw one at the creature's knee, piercing it so that the creature stumbled and fell into its good leg. Anderson rushed forward, vaguely aware that someone, likely Claire, had entered the cargo hold and gasped.

He stabbed the creature through the mouth, which seemed to anger it. It drove its bladed arm through Anderson's midsection and once again sent him flying into the wall, this time with a massive amount of blood and innards bursting out of him and onto the floor.

With the muscles in his midsection damaged and his spine likely injured, he found it hard to move. Throwing bayonets was all in the wrist, luckily, so he sent another at the monster's good knee, hoping to stall it long enough so he could heal a little.

It dawned on him that he was in an unusual amount of trouble. Normally, his opponents didn't seek to tear him apart after they perceived him to be killed. They would but a few bullets in him maybe and when they turned to leave, he would regenerate and kill them. This thing on the other hand seemed like the type that would pound him into a paste once he was down.

Something beeped, a loud shrill noise which made Anderson look to his right to see Claire pushing buttons on a panel. A box on their end of the cargo hold shot forward, propelled by a slingshot mechanism and struck the wounded creature hard in the side, sending it, along with the crate, flying out of the open hatch.

"Wait!" Anderson shouted as though it would hear him and come back. He shot a look at Claire as his stomach knitted back together, and actually felt his hand grip a bayonet in which to slay her.

His sense caught up with him first, and he let his arm go slack. She was running over to him with concern in her eyes, as well as some revulsion. "Are you okay?" she asked.

"I'll be fit as a fiddle in a moment," he said through clenched, bloody teeth. "I had him…why did you go and do that?"

"I don't take chances," she said. "You keep forgetting that this isn't a game to me and Steve."

She was right, he did keep forgetting that, but damn her if she hadn't spoiled his last chance at a proper battle. He supposed he could forgive her.

Claire got up from her knee and went back to the panel where she found the button to close the hatch. With it shut, it became much quieter inside. Anderson was soon on his feet again, just in time to feel the plane make a sharp turn. "What's Steven doing?" Anderson asked.

"I don't know," Claire said, going back into the cockpit with Anderson following behind.

"We've got a problem," Steve said. "The autopilot kicked on and I can't override it. It's making us go south."

"Did you think it would be that easy?" Alfred's high tittering voice said over the radio. "I'm sending you somewhere you should find quite entertaining," he said.

Claire looked at Anderson and then back at the radio. "Is that the cross-dresser?"

Anderson nodded and sighed. His head ached from blood loss and he was hungry and tired. Once again, the opportunity to push himself to the limit had been stolen away from him, sent flying out the back of a airplane's cargo hold. He doubted whatever Alfred Ashford had set up for them was going to be much different than Rockfort Island.

"If this infernal machine is flying us by itself, perhaps we should rest," Anderson said. He slumped down in a seat and rubbed the bridge of his nose. Claire and Steve both nodded in agreement, and looked about for a comfortable place to nod off for a short while, or however long it would take for the plane to get to its destination.

**To be continued...**


	8. Chapter 8

Chapter Eight

**Chapter Eight.**

Like an alarm clock from hell, the plane's warning lights flashed on, along with a high-pitched beeping that seemed to come from everywhere in the cockpit. Anderson awoke, irritated and wondered why he was having trouble seeing.

He hadn't cleaned his glasses before falling asleep. Taking them off and wiping them on a clean patch of coat, he looked to see the blurred shapes of Claire and Steve moving frantically near the controls.

Putting his glasses back on, he could see through the windshield that they had come to their destination and were coming in fast towards a low, grey building covered in snow and blasted by wind.

"Antarctica," Anderson said. "I don't think I've ever been here." He had set foot on nearly every continent on the world. Asia, the Americas, even Australia, but never Antarctica. Until now, he had never suspected that evil had reached such a place; at least not the kind he was tasked by God to fight.

His two companions were screaming as the plane hit the ground hard, jostling them all into the ceiling. Landing back in his seat, he saw the grey building coming closer as the plane skidded towards it. It was much larger than he had though at first, and it looked as though they were going to crash into it.

"Hang on to something," he said, hoping Steve and Claire would do just that and perhaps survive the impending crash uninjured. Gripping his own seat, he braced himself for the plane plowing into and through the wall. Dust and debris flew everywhere, obscuring his vision, but his grip on the chair kept him from flying around in the cockpit.

Once things had settled, he stood to check on Claire and Steve who were both lying in a heap on the floor in front of the controls. Sitting up and coughing, Claire shook Steve, who rolled onto his back with a groan. "Still in the world of the living?" Anderson asked.

Looking up at him with a familiar annoyance, Claire stuck her hand out, which Anderson grabbed and helped her to her feet. "Somehow, yes," she said, as Steve got to his feet. "It's cold in here," she said.

Anderson felt the chill as well, now that the windshield had been wrecked. He peered over the broken glass and saw that the plane had intruded into the building's dome and was set over a kind of walkway. "We're in Antarctica," Anderson said. "It's bound to be a little nippy."

All three of them were looking out into the building with its high, stadium-esque ceiling. It was gloomy inside, the only light coming from small places at key points. No one had come running to see what had crashed into the wall, no alarms had gone off, nothing was happening at all. "Where is everybody?" Steve said.

"This place is spooky," Claire said. "And cold."

It was cold. Not as cold as it was outside, but the heat seemed to be turned down substantially inside and the draft from the hole the plane had made wasn't helping either.

"It's abandoned," Anderson said. "But that heathen sent us here to be killed, so I suspect this might be another outbreak zone."

"Maybe he sent us here to freeze," Steve said. "Or starve."

Anderson smiled, sensing something in the air. The place was deathly cold and smelled only of ice and concrete, but he knew there was something else in the air as well. There was evil, definitely, but there was also a sense of impending battle. "That I doubt," Anderson said. "The miserable sinner wants to feed us to some of his pets, not unlike the Roman's of the old days." It was interesting to see how some things stayed the same, he thought. "Why don't you two stay here while I go look around. I'll find you some coats perhaps," he said, climbing out into the plane's hood.

"We're coming with you," Claire said. "We didn't exactly have the easiest time back at the military base."

Ducking to look through the broken windshield from his perch on the hood, he smiled at Claire. "How many bullets do you have left?"

"A little over half of what we started with," she said, frowning.

"Good," Anderson said. "I'm certain there's an emergency blanket somewhere on this wreck. Find it and huddle yourselves beneath it and wait. If something wants to get at you, it's going to have to climb through this here opening, where it'll get a face full of lead. Keep low and keep quiet. I think you'll find sitting here a much easier time than running around that nasty base. You may even get radioed by some Vatican people."

He saw Claire's shoulders slump in defeat. He admired her bravery for wanting to go gallivanting around the base, but it made no sense to subject themselves to danger and cold when they had someone like him around. And while he had made up the fact of the radio as he had been talking, it was a good idea all the same. "Fine. When should we expect you back?"

"I'll come back inside of two hours," Anderson said. "First with some winter gear and then with a way out of this place. Maybe God will show me Grace and send me back with both. Pray for it.."

Before Claire could argue more, or Steve could voice his opinion, he slid down the airplane's front end and landed on the concrete walkway. Following it around, he went through a door which took him outside and down a set of stairs into a dim hallway.

Wishing he had a flashlight, he poked a lump the wall with a bayonet, feeling it squish. As his eyes adjusted to the dark, he could make out a man-sized cocoon held to the wall with some kind of silk. His first though was that he would soon be facing giant spiders, but the sound of fluttering wings from down the hall made him wonder.

He could make out the shape of a door, but saw something moving along the ceiling, flapping its wings. Anderson chuckled once he realized it was a giant moth. "Pitiful creature," he said as it crawled towards him from the ceiling. "What do you think you're going to do to me?"

As it stopped over his head, he felt something wet fall onto his back, followed by something on his shoulder. It was then he looked back at the cocoon on the wall and wondered if there was indeed a man inside. Making a disgusted face, he threw a bayonet up, pinning the monstrous moth into the ceiling. More of its friends were fluttered from another part of the hall that was to his left, so he quickly made his way through the door in front of him.

This room was dark as well, but there was a candle on the desk next to a box of matches. He lit the candle and went to touch where the moth had dripped on him, wondering what sort of foul liquid it had secreted.

He touched something meaty and squirming. Raising an eyebrow, he pulled on the lump of quivering flesh and heard it make a peeling sound as it tugged on his coat. Holding it up before him, he saw that it was some kind of grub; its mandibles were dripping with some sort of purple ooze, likely a neurotoxin used to paralyze its victims. Dropping it to the floor, he pulled the second one off and dropped it next to its brother before stomping them both with his boot.

Looking around the room with the candle, he found a diary. It appeared to belong to one of Alfred's servants. Skipping to the last few entries, he skimmed over the last words of a fanatical man devoted to the Ashford family. Pocketing the book, just in case there was something important in it, he searched around some more before deciding there was nothing else in the room of value.

As much as he wanted to carry the candle, he knew it would be blown out as soon as he began killing the moths infesting the hallway outside. He blew it out and had his hand on the doorknob when he heard it, a wailing echoing from somewhere close by.

Something about it sounded vaguely human and he strained his ears, listening for it to sound again. It didn't, leaving him to wonder just where the thing was and if it was moving. With all the creatures likely shuffling around the base, including him, it wasn't likely that whatever it was would go after Claire and Steve, assuming of course that they stayed put like he had told them to.

Shrugging, he decided that he couldn't assume too much about the thing just from hearing it wail and went out into the hall. The moths had clustered near the door and he quickly hacked them into pieces, sending the dust from their wings into the air.

Coughing, he went down the other path, towards a set of double doors that opened into a large room, containing large pieces of machinery meant to process cargo. He could see his breath and saw that frost had covered everything. The cold had done nothing to damped the stench of death in the room, and Anderson could see human shapes shuffling towards him from out of the gloom on the rooms far side. They came from the room's corners and from around the large generators and conveyor belts with their arms outstretched and low moans in their throats.

All were dressed in workman uniforms. They looked to be either technicians or construction workers. Anderson wondered what had happened to cause them all to become infected as he slew them with his bayonets. An air raid had caused the outbreak at Rockfort, but aside from the plane wreck, he had seen no sign of damage on the Antarctic base. But then again, he hadn't gotten far in exploring it either.

After clearing the large room, he began going through side doors and killing what he found, usually zombies, although a few smaller moths (as long as his arm) did get stuck by one of his bayonets.

Anderson found three things of value in his search of the base. First, he found the main power switch, which he flipped and shed light into the facility (although the heater didn't kick on). Second, he found a locker room with two large orange parkas which he folded as best he could and tucked under his arm. If something attacked him that required both arms, he supposed he'd simply drop them and pick them up once he was done.

The third thing he found was a way outside where some Snow Cats were parked at the foot of a high tower marked as being a heliport. "Praise the Lord," he said, looking at not one, but two options for leaving the God forsaken Umbrella facility. The answers to his problems had been dumped in his lap, more or less, and his only complaint was that he hadn't run across anything as fearsome as what he had battled on the cargo plane.

Making his way back to the plane, he sincerely hoped Alfred Ashford had something truly nasty left up his sleeve.

**To be continued…**


	9. Chapter 9

Chapter Nine

**Chapter Nine.**

Backtracking, Anderson walked through a room that was largely made up of ice and rock as opposed to concrete and steel. Out of the corner of his eye, he spied something red and moving atop a truck-sized drill bit that had stopped just short of the ice wall in front of it.

He brought his bayonet up and winced as the metal blade deflected the bullet meant for his head. Turning, he saw Alfred Ashford standing atop the drill's cab. "I don't know how you're still alive," he said keeping his rifle pointed at Anderson. The red light of the laser scope falling erratically on parts of his body. Anderson didn't care, so long as he didn't catch a shell to the head. "You must be infected with something…who do you work for?"

"God," Anderson said.

Alfred snorted nervously. "God? Oh, drop the act. You're from another division, admit it. This company has suffered from severe degeneracy since my father's day…no matter. Soon enough there will be a purging."

Alfred fired again and Anderson let the bullet strike him in the arm. He hoped Steve and Claire wouldn't mind a spot of blood or three on their parkas and threw a bayonet at Alfred, aiming to kill him.

Once again, Alfred surprised him by nearly dodging the weapon. It had been aimed at his aorta, but twisting away at the last second saved Alfred from dying on the spot. The blade slid between Alfred's hip and ribcage, likely through his liver or pancreas, Anderson wasn't sure.

With a pitiful moan, he staggered backward and fell off the drill, his rifle clattering forward at Anderson's feet. Although Alfred was out of sight, Anderson could hear him huff and puff and scuffle as he tried to move away and keep in his life blood at the same time. Anderson walked forward and picked up the rifle Alfred had dropped, thinking he would also go over and finish him off.

_Let him be,_ Anderson thought. _Maybe some suffering before he dies will bring him the clarity to repent._ He doubted it, but if there was a chance, he aught to let things be.

He made it back to the plane with no more trouble. Calling up, he was pleased to see two heads peek up from the top. Once they saw that it was him, both came sliding down, shivering and red cheeked. Handing them both parkas and Steve the rifle, he grinned broadly. "By land or by air?" he asked.

"What?" Claire said, putting the parka on and hugging herself after sticking her two pistols in their large side pockets.

"Perhaps I should say by ice or by air," Anderson said. "I found some snow cats and a helicopter tower. If we don't find a bird, we should be able to find gas for the cats, assuming they don't have any to start."

Both Claire and Steve looked pleased. "So we're getting out of here? Alright!" Steve said.

Something rumbled, making the room shake and the plane creak. Claire and Steve looked about with concern, and even Anderson was forced to frown. "Let's leave while we still can," Claire said.

They followed Anderson as he kept a brisk pace through the facility. There was another tremor and Anderson wondered if Alfred hadn't activated yet another self-destruct system. _I should've killed him,_ he thought, running.

It seemed as though the rumblings had stirred things up in the facility; a large spider with a red, diseased-looking abdomen crawled from around a corner and reared up, bearing its poisonous fangs. Anderson put a bayonet into its face, making it fall forward and twitch. Grabbing the bayonet as he ran past it, he heard Steve make a disgusted sound as he and Claire stepped around it.

"Bundle up, children," he said, kicking open the door to the outside. The bitter cold hit him like a wall, but he kept heading forward, towards the snow cats over a concrete pathway that had been snowed over.

"Can you fly a helicopter?" Claire asked Steve as they passed a snow cat.

"Sort of," Steve said.

"Let's check the snow cats," Claire said.

Anderson waited outside one of the cats as the two climbed in and searched it. Steve turned it on, and Anderson praised the Lord that it had gasoline in its tank. "There's a map, too." He heard Claire say. "We can make it to the Italian base off to the east."

"What about these ridges?" Steve said. "We'd have to go around them, and I'm not sure these things were meant to make the trip."

Anderson thumped on the window and shouted, "I'll go see if the Lord has even provided us with a helicopter or not. If not, we'll take gas from these others and go around the ridges."

Claire got out of the snow cat. "I'll do that now. Just hurry."

Without missing a beat, Anderson bound up the steel steps, wondering if they shouldn't just drive. He had committed to going up, so he might as well do it and come back down.

Atop the helipad, he didn't see a helicopter, nor did he see any towers nearby that had one. He shrugged, not sure he wanted to fly anyway. Regenerator or not, crashes still hurt. As he turned to leave, heavy footsteps thudded on the stairs towards the other end. The wind picked up, and snow flurried began to fall, obscuring his vision slightly. "Oh ho, what's this now?" he said to himself as the thing came into view.

It was an eight foot tall man bound in a kind of straight jacket with a dirty rag tied over his eyes. His heart was puling outside of his chest like a tumor as he staggered forward. Whatever it was, it screamed just like the thing he had heard not long ago inside the dark office where he had found the butler's journal.

Walking towards it, he wondered what evil circumstances it had come about in. It was a far cry from the creature on the airplane, which had been mutated with an evil purpose behind it. This thing was half fettered and blind, perhaps an early experiment.

Killing it would be a mercy, he thought as he launched a bayonet into the pulsing thing on its chest. It howled and backed up as something sprouted from its back, something like an insect leg, only it was spraying a noxious purple substance that boiled and popped as it hit the concrete.

Apparently, all of the fun monsters came out to play just as it was time to leave, he thought, annoyed. The appendage swept across in the air, sending the purple fluid at him, which he avoided narrowly by leaping forward and rolling off to the side. Drawing a second bayonet, he ran at the monster and with a scissor motion, sliced its head from its shoulders.

As it fell, he drove the two bayonets into the heart where the third still sat, and twisted. The monster spasmed and died, leaving Anderson to step away quickly once he realized how awful it smelled. It was some combination of a sewer, body odor, and something more acidic.

Looking down at the head, he noticed something in its ear. A green stone set into an earring. Without knowing why, he pulled it out and examined it. Since when did foul monsters wear jewelry? Looking up into the sky as the snow turned it grey, he pocketed the earring. It was times like these that he didn't ask questions, he simply accepted and didn't do the least bit of wondering.

Making his way back down, he saw that Claire was already halfway up the steps with her pistols out. Motioning for her to go back down, he smiled. "All set. There's no helicopter, so lets leave like we've planned."

Her eyebrow raised, Claire nodded and headed back down as another tremor shook the building. Anderson didn't think the place was exploding, and wondered just what was going on. Perhaps the Lord had sent an earthquake as well as the snow cats and parkas.

It wasn't wise to bank on the Lord's mercy, so he bade Steve to make a hasty exit from the base. They could slow down once they were clear of any explosion that might be coming their way.

While the snow cat purred over the frozen waste of Antarctica, Anderson could hear his two companions breath sighs of relief. Another rumble, this one louder than ever, shook them from behind and Anderson peered into the side mirror to see what had become of the base.

"What in the Lord's name is that?" he said, seeing two flesh colored worms shooting from out of the base and across the ice towards them. Tentacles was a better word, but one he didn't have time to apply before they slammed into the snow cat, flipping it over like a child's toy. Watching the cab spin, he could hear Steve and Claire shout and scream. They had been so relieved to be escaping and now, once again, they were in mortal terror.

While he rolled, his head bumping what seemed like every hard surface inside the snow cat, he prayed for his two companion's safety and for their trials to come to a swift end. For him, this was only a slightly more adventurous day on the job, for Claire and Steve…it might soon be their last day on earth.

**To be continued… **


	10. Chapter 10

Chapter Ten

**Chapter Ten.**

_Author's note: While I'm aware that Crossfire and Hellsing are not connected in canon, for the purposes of this story I'm making it so they are. My German is also non-existent, so ignore what little of it appears._

Heinkel Wolfe frowned on the scene bellow as the helicopter circled Rockfort Island. Anderson's report had said that an air raid had destroyed some of the facility, but from what she was seeing, it looked as though the bombs had gone off from within.

"I wonder where he is? I don't see him, do you?" Heinkel said, her German accent making _wonder _and _where _into _vonder _and _vhere_.

Yumie Takagi peered down, her eyes frantically scanning the ground, more likely searching for targets than Anderson, Heinkel thought. "I don't see him," Yumie said. "Looks like we'll have to land and take a look."

Heinkel bit her lip, not liking the idea much. She had heard plenty of stories and reports from people who had come out on the breathing end of Umbrella's industrial "accidents." There weren't many people telling such tales, and those that did were lucky to be alive. "Take us down," Heinkel shouted above the chopper's roar to the pilot.

There weren't many good places to land. Finally, the pilot picked a spot just outside the prison compound. The bridge leading from the prison yard to the main facility was badly damaged, but Heinkel thought it looked traversable.

They touched down and jumped off the chopper. As it rose into the air, Heinkel felt her senses and body come alive. She was on the ground and in hostile territory. The trepidation she had felt before had become a kind of anticipation, as she was now in her element.

"So what, we just look around for Father Anderson?" Yumie asked.

Scratching her head, Heinkel pulled a map from her pocket using her free hand and unfolded it. "Let's see here…" she said, finding their location on the map they had gotten from a spy satellite. It had been taken before the base had been blown up, but Heinkel imagined the layout would be the same. "Yeah, lets just wander over that way."

Heinkel walked out onto the creaking bridge, followed by Yumie. According to the map, they were off to the meat and potatoes of the base, i.e. the mansion and the military facility. Intelligence suggested there was an airport as well as a dock on that side of the island. That's where Anderson was likely to be, unless he had become carried away with himself and gone off to fight horrible monsters in some dank corner of the island.

Crossing the bridge was no trouble and neither was scaling the cliff on the far side, as there was a set of metal stairs that had only come a little loose from the explosions that had rocked the island recently.

Up top, there was evidence of Anderson-authored carnage. Decaying corpses were lying all over the place, most with wounds in their heads—the ones that still had heads at least—that looked to have been caused by a blade.

"Look at these things, Yumie," Heinkel said. "Anderson killed them, yet they're rotten like they've been dead for days. Unless he's taken to mutilating innocent corpses, these things were walking around not long ago."

"As if the vampires and their ghouls weren't bad enough," Yumie said, looking about angrily. "Sinners have to manufacture the undead as well…"

"Remember, we need to be careful," Heinkel said. "These people were infected with a virus. If we're bitten by one of these things, we'll become one of them."

"I've never been bitten, not even by a ghoul," Yumie said. "But I'll be sure to clean my sword after I'm done."

Heinkel frowned. Being a gun person, she had less to fear from the viral zombies than Yumie with her sword. Still, Yumie was right. As far as Heinkel knew, no ghoul had ever taken a bite out of her.

_We usually fight people, though,_ Heinkel thought. _It's not often we get sent to kill vampires and ghouls…that's what Anderson is for._

She shook her head and went though the half-falling-off door that lead into the military facility's front yard. Worrying was what got people killed. It took their mind off the moment and made them blind to dangers they should have seen. Worrying about one's self was bad enough, but worrying about someone else was a mistake.

Smoke was rising from the back of the facility and Heinkel wondered if it might not be prudent to simply stick to open areas and wait for Anderson to show himself. Yumie had already walked ahead of her towards the building's front door. There was another door across the yard at the other end that looked like it led to a garage or a motor pool perhaps.

"I'll check down there," Heinkel said. "Don't go too far inside without me."

"I won't," Yumie said, entering the building as Heinkel made her way down to the other end. Yumie was a berserker, someone who put her own safety bellow that of killing her opponents. It said something that her usual bravado wasn't present here on Rockfort Island. They were dealing with something new in fighting Umbrella, and Heinkel got the distinct impression from the bombarded island that it still had some horrors left to serve up.

Beyond the door of the far end was a tank. A severely out-dated tank by the look of it. Moving around back, Heinkel saw that it had been parked over a manhole and moved forward by someone to allow access.

Before she could wonder too much about what was down there, the sound of wet paws on dirt made her look up. In front of her was a Doberman. The sheen from its fur suggested that it had been soaked in something. Growling, it padded forward and as it did, the smell hit Heinkel's nose, making it wrinkle.

The dog reeked of week-old hamburger; the stench also seemed to trigger the realization that the dog wasn't in fact wet, but skinless and decomposing. "Mein Got en Himmel," she said, raising one of her two pistols to shoot the dog.

As her finger squeezed the trigger, something hit her in the back, knocking her forward. The bullet went wide and missed the dog she had been shooting at. Realizing she had been ambushed, she hooked her arm and shot above her back where she prayed the dog's head was. She was rewarded with a yelp and the weight being taken off her shoulders as the rotting animal slumped sideways.

Her other pistol fired once again at the dog in front as it charged at her with the intent of ripping her face off as she lie prone. The bullet hit the animal in the snout, driving through bone and meat to take the brain out the back end.

Getting to her feet, she scrambled up onto the tank and looked around for more rotting Dobermans. Seeing none, she breathed a sigh of relief and once again reminded herself that it was Heinkel Wolfe she needed to concern herself with, not Yumie Takagi.

The door to the small yard was kicked open, making Heinkel aim her pistols at it. She lowered them as the katana-wielding nun entered, her blade drawn and dripping blood. "Did you shoot something?" she asked.

"Zombie dogs," Heinkel replied. "Did you stab something?"

Yumie raised the blade up and smiled. "You wouldn't believe it, mutated yellow men with extendible arms. Three tried to clobber me to death from across the room, but I cut them to pieces, arms and all."

Heinkel decided not to mention that she had come dangerously close to being mauled and wondered if it was as easy for Yumie as she made it sound. "Any sign of Anderson?"

Yumie shook her head, her long black hair falling out from the tie Yumie had been keeping it in. "That end is locked down. There's an alarm blaring inside and it was driving me insane. I barely heard your shots."

Heinkel tried not to smile at Yumie's comment about being insane. Her birth name was actually Yumiko Takagi, not Yumie. Yumie was the name of Yumiko's berserker personality, the one that had been awakened for this mission. It was a bit like having two partners in one.

"There's a passage leading down behind this tank," Heinkel said. "I think we should take it and see where it leads us. Maybe Anderson opened it up and went down."

"Lead the way," Yumie said, walking around the tank as Heinkel jumped off. "Aw, gross," she said, smelling the two dead dogs. "At least the yellow men didn't stink."

Heinkel rolled her eyes as she descended the ladder. Her only hope was that Yumie didn't notice the smelly dog prints on her back, and that the smell would wash out.

**To be continued… **


	11. Chapter 11

Chapter Eleven

**Chapter Eleven.**

The biggest spider she had ever seen was crouched down the hall. Its abdomen alone was the size of a bean bag chair, colored a dull red with a sickly green pattern on the back. When it got to within five meters, it reared its yellow legs up and spat a gob of green fluid towards them.

Heinkel jumped into a c-roll to avoid the fluid, putting a wall between herself and the spider. Yumie was still on the ladder when the creature spit, and jumped as well, landing hard on Heinkel.

"Ow, damn it, Yumie!" Heinkel shouted. "Get off!"

Yumie rolled off Heinkel and was on her feet, her blade out as the spider came around the corner. Heinkel had time to sit up and aim her pistols, but little else. Yumie's sword was a blur, sending spider legs and gunk flying everywhere.

Yumie suddenly ducked as another gob of green spider venom flew over her head. Heinkel couldn't see down the hall but got to her feet and took a quick glance before taking cover again.

There were two spiders at the other end of the hall, one on the ceiling and one on the ground. Yumie had moved behind Heinkel, where she was safe from the spider's spit. Taking in a breath, Heinkel rounded the corner and fired, twice for each spider. Her bullets slammed into their multi-eyed faces, bursting the black orbs and sending spider brains flying backward over their abdomens.

"All dead," Heinkel said.

Yumie came around the corner to look at the dead spiders. "Why are they so big?" Yumie asked. "What's the point?"

"It's the virus they're infected with," Heinkel said. "It makes some animals grow to enormous proportions. Raccoon City even had giant alligator running loose in the sewers. Didn't you read the report?"

Yumie snorted. "No."

Heinkel tapped her forehead, realizing it was probably Yumiko who had read the report, not Yumie. "Well, it does weird things to animals and plants. Let's look around for signs of Anderson."

Yumie nodded, walking past the spider corpses while Heinkel made for a door near the ladder they had come down. Behind it was an office with a map of Rockfort Island on the wall. It was more of a painting, really, depicting the island before things had been built on it.

She searched through the drawers of the desk, thinking there might be something important in them. The office seemed to be of the secret variety, but she found nothing particularly helpful or incriminating. One object she did find that peaked her curiosity was a blue plate shaped like a shield with a golden halberd set into the center. It looked like it was supposed to be hung somewhere, but there were no hooks on the back.

Leaving it, she went out into the hall to see what Yumie had found. She was standing at the end of the hall, examining a door. "I think we've found a dead end," Yumie said, thumping it with the hilt of her sword. "Should we go back up?"

"Why won't the door open?" Heinkel said, looking at it. It was thick steel with the indentation of an axe of some sort set in the center.

"It's locked," Yumie said. "But I can't find a key hole or a card reader, just this slot here." She poked it with her finger, lightly as though expecting a shock.

"Wait here," Heinkel said, going back into the room and picking up the blue plate, which she threw into the wall as hard as she could, shattering it and leaving the golden halberd ornament. She picked it up and brought it back to the door, where she put it in.

A loud click signaled the door being unlocked. Yumie grabbed the handle and jerked the door open, revealing a dark room with looming shapes inside. Without going inside, Yumie moved her hand over the wall past the door, searching for a light switch.

With her pistols pointing past Yumie's shoulders, Heinkel watched as a few white lights snapped on towards the back of the room. The nose of a jet could now be seen, but no sign of Anderson or threats to their safety. "Lead the way, Yumie." Heinkel said.

Both entered the room ready to swiftly murder any zombie or mutant that happened to think it could kill them. Heinkel recognized the jets as being Harriers, the door to the hangar being on the ceiling, as the jets had the ability to hover like a helicopter let them land and take off from nearly anywhere.

There were two of them, which seemed to be all the hangar had been designed to hold. If Anderson had escaped on his own accord, it hadn't been through here.

"What are those for?" Yumie said, pointing with her blade towards two large steel boxes. "They don't look like they belong here."

Heinkel could see it as well. The man-sized boxes were set between the two jets at an angle as though they had been carelessly set down, a stark contrast to the orderly and sterile hangar.

They were about to walk over and inspect them, when a man stepped out from behind them. He was wearing a jet black flight suit with the sleeves rolled up. His blond hair was slicked back over his head and cut short, giving him a neat and ordered appearance. Why he was wearing sunglasses in such a dark place however, was a mystery.

As cool a customer as he looked, he seemed genuinely surprised at the sight of two women, one dressed as a nun and the other a priest (armed no less), standing in the hangar.

"Ha," he said. "A nun and a priest, how odd."

"Who the hell are you?" Heinkel said.

The man was smiling. Heinkel had dealt with many people who had taken such a cavalier attitude towards them, but usually those people were backed by armed men. "I might ask you the same thing," he said, crossing his arms. "What in the world could two people looking like you be doing in a place like this?"

Heinkel sensed Yumie moving out from behind her, likely to line up her impending attack. In addition to picking up Anderson, their orders included killing Umbrella employees along with its creations. There was nothing, aside from his presence, that indicated he was from Umbrella, but Yumie wasn't likely to wait for confirmation.

"We're looking for a friend of ours. He was being held prisoner here, but the place looks blown up. What happened?" Heinkel didn't expect much of an answer. The man likely _was _an Umbrella employee who hadn't managed to escape just yet, and Yumie was apt to kill him shortly.

"It would appear someone has set off the self-destruct system," the man said. "A bit redundant, really. The island was bombed not long ago." He was still standing with his arms crossed, the barest hint of a smirk on his face. She couldn't see anyone covering him from behind, so there was no reason for him to be so confidant.

"Enough games. Who are you? Are you from Umbrella?"

"My name is Albert Wesker, and who I work for is no concern of the Vatican. Now, as for your friend, the killer priest, he and two other prisoners left here on a plane not long ago. Sadly for them, their craft was redirected southward to an installation in the Antarctic."

"The Antarctic? Why?" Heinkel asked, steadying her pistols. Wesker had moved slightly to the side, his arms still crossed. It now occurred to her that he must have some sort of trick up his sleeve, a bomb perhaps.

Wesker shrugged, letting his arms drop to his sides while he turned his head, stretching his neck. Whatever he was about to do, he was going to do it soon. "Perhaps he angered the base commander, or the autopilot malfunctioned. Who knows? Either way, he won't leave that base alive, just as you won't be from this hangar. You, with the sword, go ahead and try it."

Before Heinkel could object, Yumie rushed forward, her sheathed blade poised to cut Wesker in two from the draw. Heinkel heard the _shirook_ of her blade leaving its sheath and saw the gleam of steel flash at Wesker's midsection.

Wesker moved towards Yumie, stepping towards the outside of her lighting quick swing, avoiding it. He elbowed her in the side of the head, sending her sprawling across the hangar floor.

Heinkel blinked, not sure what she had just seen. People, normal people at least, didn't move that fast or hit that hard. She opened fire on Wesker and watched in horror as he spun around, dipping and rolling, avoiding her bullets like they were casually tossed softballs.

Both weapons clicked on empty and suddenly Wesker was standing in front of her. She had time to look into his sunglasses and see red, reptilian eyes glaring from behind them before his fist struck her in the stomach, sending her backward into the hangar wall.

With the wind knocked out of her and her head spinning, Heinkel thought this might be it. Wesker was some kind of freak, and she hadn't been prepared for it. Ejecting her empty clips, she mechanically fished for more in her pocket to reload. If she was going to die, she would do it with bullets in her gun.

Wesker was laughing. "Too easy," he said, walking towards Heinkel. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Yumie's still form. The blow to her head had been a hard one and she likely had a concussion if she was still alive.

He stopped a few meters in front of Heinkel, his fist raised to deliver the killing blows. His head turned sharply towards one end of the hangar, as though he had heard something. "She's awake," Wesker said. "This isn't good."

Heinkel looked to the south wall where Wesker's attention had gone, wondering if hitting the back of her head on the wall had addled her brains. There was no one at the other end that Heinkel could see, but she used the opportunity to load her pistols anyway.

"No you don't," Wesker said, kicking both weapons out of Heinkel's hands, making her left numb. He looked back at the two metal crates and laughed. "I know," he said, walking towards them, leaving Heinkel to start crawling for her weapons that had landed two meters to her right. "I'll leave you some playmates. I've got business to attend elsewhere."

Her right hand closed on one of her pistols, but her left was in too much pain to be of much use at the moment. Still on her back, she brought the gun up to see that Wesker had gone behind one of the crates. There was the sound of a mechanical lock opening, and the dark shape of Wesker leaping like some kind of giant grasshopper across the other side of the hangar.

Wondering if he had armed a bomb, she remembered his comment about playmates. It made sense when she heard the _tic tic tic_ of claws on concrete and saw a dark, simian shape lumber out from behind the steel crates. Holding the top of her gun in her teeth, she moved the slide back and chambered a round. Yumie had begun to stir, and Heinkel hoped she would be able to get to her feet and assess the situation in time.

"Hey," Heinkel shouted, hoping to draw the creature's attention and buy Yumie the time she would need. "Come and get some, over here."

The thing turned and let out a high pitched screech, followed by two more screeches behind it. As it walked into the light, Heinkel saw that it was covered in green, pebbled skin, like a reptile. The claws at the end of its long, muscular arms flexed with the intent to kill and Heinkel prayed for God to give her a good aim.

**To be continued… **


	12. Chapter 12

Chapter Twelve

**Chapter Twelve.**

A second reptile monster jumped up on top of the shining metal crate and screeched. The sound was like fingernails being raked down a chalkboard and it made Heinkel wince.

The one on the ground that was creeping towards her was the one she had decided to worry about. Her left hand still tingled from the kick Wesker had delivered before making his exit and she thought he might have broken her pinky. That ceased to be a concern of hers once the creature stooped and came at her running, its claws held low to slash at her in an upward motion.

She sent three shots towards its flat, reptilian face. It was set low, almost level with its shoulders, giving the illusion of it having no neck. One of Heinkel's shots went too high, the bullet zipping over the things head and pinging off one of the harriers. The other hit it in the chest, a wound which it didn't seem to notice much. The third shot, to Heinkel's relief, passed through the monster's right eye.

Screeching, it fell backward on its rear, pawing at its wounded face. It seemed to be more angry than hurt, which made Heinkel shoot it more. Her bullets thudded into the thing's chest, only one finding its head. It stood up, only to fall forward and die.

Another screech from atop the metal crate made Heinkel turn her pistol onto the second monster that had stepped into view. It had been joined by a third which had come around the other side of the crate. Both were looking at Yumie, despite all the commotion being caused by Heinkel and the dead monster.

Yumie herself had managed to drag herself into a kneeling position. Her hand was on the side of her head, and for a moment Heinkel thought Yumie was a goner; she wouldn't be able to shoot the two monsters in time before they mauled her. It was then that she saw Yumie's other hand, resting tightly on the hilt of her katana.

_Paying opossum, _Heinkel thought. _Let's hope it works._

Both monsters came at her at once, with one on the top of the crate leaping into the air to pounce down on her. As it neared the end of its victory screech, Yumie struck. Her body twisted, bringing the blade up and around, bisecting the creature at an angle. Her second strike came back around from the other direction and split the other monster in two from the head down.

_That's my Yumie,_ Heinkel thought. Her sword skills were nothing short of supernatural, and they made Heinkel glad Yumie was on the Vatican's side. She got up, picked up her weapons and made her way slowly over to Yumie, stopping just out of her blade's striking range. "Yumie," Heinkel said. "Yumie, are you alright?"

She waited for Yumie to look up and recognize her as being Heinkel. Once she saw that Yumie had come down from attack-mode, she risked stepping in closer. "Let me see your head."

Yumie turned her face, showing Heinkel the nasty cut Wesker had given her. Blood was running out from the thick black waves of her hair and a nasty goose egg was rising from her scalp. "How many fingers am I holding up?" Heinkel asked, showing thee fingers to Yumie.

She rolled her eyes, which seemed to make her head spin. "I just cut two lizard monsters in half, I think I can count to five, Heinkel."

"As I thought," Heinkel said. "Well, I say we count this as a victory. Did you hear him say Anderson is in the Antarctic? We need to go there and get him."

Yumie winced and stood, using the wall and Heinkel for support. "That bastard said a lot of things," Yumie said. "The next thing he says will be a cry for mercy, which he won't get."

"My thoughts exactly," Heinkel said, although it wasn't quite true. _We might run into him again,_ she thought. _He'll pull the same crap on us again, too. Granted, we'll be ready, but still…_ The man's powers had been formidable. As much as Heinkel wanted a rematch, perhaps if the opportunity to let Anderson deal with him showed up, it would be best to take it.

"Did you hear him say something about someone being awake?" Heinkel asked. "It's why he left off and set his animals on us."

Yumie huffed. "My brain was still rolling around in my head at that point. You got a nasty bump yourself from the looks of it. Are you sure you weren't hallucinating or something?"

Heinkel shrugged; she didn't really know. There had been nothing in the direction Wesker had directed his attention, nothing to explain the words "she's awake." Heinkel took Yumie by the arm and helped her stand erect. She wobbled, but soon steadied herself. Yumie looked like a Japanese nun, but was about as tough as a Viking berserker; some rest and some first aid on the helicopter ride would set her right again.

"Can you walk and fight?" Heinkel asked, just to make sure.

"If you don't mother me to death first," Yumie said.

They made their way back out of the hangar and up the ladder leading to the surface. Heinkel was cautious of more diseased dogs or zombies that might be waiting around at the top. The corpses of the animals she had killed were still where she had left them, stinking more than ever it seemed.

Heinkel and Yumie climbed up on top of the tank and sat down. Yumie lay on her back while Heinkel pulled her radio out from her long coat. Thankfully, it wasn't broken. "Wolf to Demon Boy, Wolf to Demon Boy, do you copy? Over," she said.

"Copy that, Wolf, this is Demon Boy. What's your status? Over." Came a voice with an elegant Italian accent. It belonged to Enrico Maxwell, the head of Section 13 Iscariot.

"Anderson isn't here. According to a mutant man, who nearly killed us both, he's in Antarctica with two escaped prisoners. We've both got bruised skulls, but we're otherwise fine. Over."

There was a brief pause on the other end before Maxwell replied. "A mutant man? Antarctica? Explain."

Heinkel noted he forgot to say over, but it wasn't wise to point out Maxwell's mistakes when he was in a cranky mood. Heinkel sighed and retold the events of the hangar, making sure to add Wesker's off behavior, and his name.

"Captain Albert Wesker, formerly of S.T.A.R.S," Maxwell said. "Yes, he does work for Umbrella, or at least he did. You say he had 'mutant powers?' That's interesting. We'll send a chopper to take you to the Antarctic base. Anderson still needs retrieval."

Heinkel sighed. She had planned on being sent south, but having the order come down seemed to make it a chore. "Roger that, Demon Boy. We'll radio when we find him. Over and out."

She pocketed the radio and slid down off the tank. "Come on Yumie," she said.

Yumie sat up and slid down, putting on her glasses. "Heinkel, why does my head hurt?" she asked.

Heinkel looked at her, and her shoulders slumped. It was Yumiko, the polar opposite of Yumie. They were still in enemy territory, so Heinkel was less than glad to see her. "Yumie bumped it in a fight. We're going to Antarctica just as soon as we make it to the pickup point."

"Is this Rockfort Island?" Yumiko asked, following close to Heinkel, clutching her sword to her chest like it was a bouquet of flowers. "Are there zombies?"

"I think we killed most of them," Heinkel said. "Still, be on your guard. One bite and it's curtains for you."

Yumiko gulped and stuck closer to Heinkel. "Ow, I think she split my head open. Can you tell her to be more careful? I mean, I don't mess up her sword arm when she's not around, why does she have to bump my head and make me dizzy?"

As they neared the spot where they had landed, Heinkel heard the whir of a helicopter blade. It was one of the big transport choppers, the kind that would lower a line for them and pull them up instead of touching down. It had enough fuel to go to the southern base and, Heinkel hoped, a good medic or two, maybe even a faith healer.

"You know how she is," Heinkel said. "If I tell her to be careful, she'll scar you up even worse."

"I hate having two personalities," Yumiko said. "One mind, one body, that's how it should be."

Heinkel smiled. While it was a bit questionable as to why the Lord had put Yumie and Yumiko in the same shell, that was just the way it was. "I'm sure there was a reason behind it," Heinkel said, as the chopper came closer. She could see the line dangling from its metal underbelly and thought of the Aspirin they would have on board.

_Truth be told,_ Heinkel thought. _Yumiko can be a nice break from Yumie, as well as the other way around._ The line dangled near them, and Heinkel strapped herself in, along with Yumiko. As the helicopter pulled them up, Heinkel gave one last look over the dark island, fancying she could still see the shapes of undead walking about in search of food.

Maxwell would likely send a brigade of killer priests in to clean the place up. Anderson had hopefully transferred whatever vital intelligence there had been as well as killed anything that might cause an abundance of casualties to the less durable members of Iscariot.

"Is it the South or the North Pole Santa Claus is supposed to live in?" Yumiko asked.

"The North Pole," Heinkel said, wondering how easy it would be to wake Yumie back up when the time came.

**To be continued…**


	13. Chapter 13

Chapter Thirteen

**Chapter Thirteen.**

Yumiko had pulled up the hood on her habit and put her glasses back on. Heinkel had no idea why she could suddenly see better when she was Yumie, and didn't care to ask. Many things about her partner made no sense but few things in her life did.

The chopper had been decked out with the best field medical care the world had to offer. In what seemed like no time at all the swelling on her head had gone down and the pain in her hand had been fixed. Feeling better than she had even before getting injured Heinkel mused that it might be worth getting hurt simply to be fixed up.

After an hour or two of flight the chopper stopped and hovered. Heinkel looked out the window and saw the ice wall sticking up from the sea. The grey concrete of the base was hard to see against the snow covered rocks but as the chopper hovered closer its finer points became distinguishable.

Finer points including the crashed cargo plane; the tail end was jutting from the large central dome. "Just Anderson's style," Heinkel said. "I wonder if his new friends lived."

Yumiko pressed her nose to the glass and looked astounded. "Heinkel, what are those things coming out from the dome?"

What Heinkel had taken for pipelines at first, she now looked at with puzzlement and disgust. Flesh colored vines, or tentacles, were running in odd directions around the installation. The larger ones were still, but the ones near the dome, that seemed to have busted through the wall, would flop casually every so often. "I don't know," Heinkel said. "Nothing good, that's for sure."

The chopper began to descend, cautiously, the pilot being well aware that giant tentacle vines were not things to be trifled with. He set the chopper down on a tower marked as a helipad, but only lightly. The plan had been to touch down and get Heinkel and Yumiko landed as quickly as possible to prevent risk to the chopper. After reviewing intelligence regarding all known Umbrella bioweapons outbreaks, it was discovered by the Vatican that helicopters tended to suffer unfortunate fates more often than not.

The door slid open and Heinkel, dragging Yumiko by the hand, leapt into the wall of bitter cold. She heard the door sliding shut even before her feet hit the ground and made her way towards the ladder metal stairs on the other side.

"It's cold!" Yumiko said. "They didn't say it would be so cold!"

"It's Antarctica, you didn't need to be told," Heinkel shouted as the chopper rose into the air.

"Let's get inside," Yumiko shouted.

Nodding, Heinkel headed towards the stairs, noticing that the chilled concrete surface had been spattered in some kind of purple paint. Perhaps someone had been trying to mark the helipad, but they had done a slop job of it if that was so. Ignoring it, Heinkel led Yumiko down the tower and into a side door.

Once inside, both began shivering. Heinkel thought it the height of oversight that they hadn't brought parkas, or something. Inside was chilly, but nothing compared to the outdoors. "Maybe all the freaks will have frozen to death," Heinkel said, doubting it.

They made their way through empty, cold halls and up a flight of stairs before coming out into a bizarre room. Heinkel surmised that, had things been normal, they would have been on a walkway above a factory floor or a processing room. Instead, they were looking out onto an ice rink. The entire room bellow them had somehow become flooded. Heinkel guessed that the commotion that had occurred might have fractured one or more water pipelines, thus flooding and freezing the lower half of the base.

"This isn't good," Heinkel said. "What if Anderson is down there somewhere?"

Yumiko looked ill. "He'd be trapped…we wouldn't be able to dig through all of that, not in a million years."

Heinkel stomped on the ice with one foot, holding the broken railing for support. It was at least a foot thick, perhaps more. Heinkel doubted the entire room was solid ice, but in any case, if Anderson was down there, he was frozen or drowned.

"Well, we have to assume he's up and out of it," Heinkel said. "Otherwise, we go home."

"Let's check that door over there," Yumiko said, pointing to the right hand side of the room.

Instead of going around the metal walkway, Yumiko stepped out onto the ice and promptly fell on her rear. She cried out and tried to stand, using her sword as a crutch, which did her no good, leaving her to fall once again.

"Yumiko…" Heinkel said, walking out into the ice and sliding a bit her self. "You're such a…spider?"

Something black and the size of a bulldozer with eight legs was crawling beneath the sheet of ice. How it was breathing and how it wasn't frozen, Heinkel didn't ask. The effects of the T-virus was explanation enough. "I'm a spider?" Yumiko said, her eyebrow raised. "That's the oddest comment…what are you pointing at, Heinkel…Oh my God!"

Yumiko had seen the spider and gotten to her feet as quick and as easily as if she had been born on ice. Sliding behind Heinkel as she backed up towards the surer footing of the walkway, Yumiko pointed at it from over Heinkel's shoulder. "C-c-can it get at us?" she stammered.

Heinkel had drawn both of her pistols and was aiming them at the spider. It seemed to be crawling around aimlessly, not attempting to get through the lair of ice to attack them. "I don't think so," Heinkel said. "Let's just get out of here before it shows us any different."

They made their way quickly across the ice, the fear of the spider aiding them with their balance. Heinkel let Yumiko open the door, while she covered their backs with her pistols.

"It's locked," Yumiko said, tugging on the handle.

"What?" Heinkel said as the spider began tapping the ice with its foreleg. "Crap, it's breaking through!"

Yumiko tugged on the door handle harder, but to no avail. The spider finished kicking through the ice, sending clear chunks up out onto the surface and climbing up out of the hole. Water dripped off its smooth, black body and the clammy stink of rot filled the room.

"Forget the lock, we have to kill it," Heinkel said, firing at the creature's abdomen so as to assure hits. "Yumie, wake up!"

"What? Aw, no, for real? Can't you kill it on your own?" Yumiko shouted, putting her foot on the door and tugging on the handle with all her might.

Sighing, Heinkel struck Yumiko in the back of the head with her elbow, not hard enough to crack her head open, but enough to roust Yumie from her slumber. She heard the nun's body strike the door and slide to the ground, making her wonder if she hadn't hit her too hard.

There was still the matter of the giant spider which was rounding on her and unsheathing its half-meter fangs that glistened black and dripped poison. She sent bullets into its face and watched as they splattered into its carapace and bounced clean off its fangs.

Putrid ooze dribbled out the holes, but not the wash of living spider blood she had hoped to see. With half a clip left, she aimed high, hoping to shoot out some of the monster's eyes before it got closer.

"Heinkel!" Yumie said, standing up and bumping into her. "Where are we? What's going on?"

"Kill the giant spider," Heinkel shouted, running and leaping as the spider charged. She slid across the ice, narrowly avoiding the hole the spider had crawled up from and stopping when she reached the railing on the other side. Without looking to see if Yumie had escaped, she ejected her spent clips and replaced them.

When she turned, she saw that the spider was lop-sided and scuttling frantically with its legs. Yumie ran out from behind its abdomen, laughing with her sword drawn. Skidding to a stop, she made another pass on Heinkel's side, and sliced the creature's legs off on its other side.

The spider was reduced to twitching and writhing, while Yumie grabbed it by a leg stump and began to push, her feet scrambling against the ice. "Heinkel, some help!"

She holstered her pistols and helped Yumie slide the spider's legless body back into the hole it had crawled up from where it sank. "Nice job," Heinkel said. "That one seemed to be undead…"

"Who cares? It's got no legs and it's sunk. Is this that base we were talking about a few minutes ago?"

"Er, yes," Heinkel said. "Stand back, I'm going to blow the handle off that locked door." She moved past Yumie and took aim at the handle, shooting it off. It took a few bullets, but too the door was swinging open freely, letting two men with grey, rotting flesh come staggering through with their arms raised.

One bullet from each gun took them down. The fell forward, stiff as boards; the cold seemed to have some effect on the zombies, but not enough to immobilize them.

"Maybe there'll be some good monsters in here to kill," Yumie said, sheathing her sword and walking through the door. "The last ones were a little boring."

"Boring? They nearly killed us. You don't remember Wesker's lizard things, do you?"

Yumie tapped her forehead with the hilt of her sword. "Oh yeah…we can kill him too. Smug bastard…"

"We'll be ready for him this time around," Heinkel said, keeping her eyes and ears open for danger.

**To be continued…**


	14. Chapter 14

Chapter Fourteen

**Chapter Fourteen.**

As they made their way deeper into the Antarctic base, it became clear that it had been designed to be some sort of bioweapons production facility. Every room Heinkel and Yumie came across seemed designed to aid some sort of monster in various stages of its production.

They destroyed the half-formed monstrosities they came across without taking time to examine them. Both women were used to violence and bloodshed, but the things they saw in the labs would haunt their dreams for months afterward; the only thing that kept them from ignoring the creatures and bypassing them completely was the knowledge that they were putting souls out of their misery.

Some of the more complete ones woke up while they were being killed and offered a bit of resistance. One creature, similar to the ones Wesker had unleashed, only it seemed to be more amphibian than reptile, with a wide mouth and small eyes, nearly swallowed Yumie, but was cut open by her sword.

Heinkel shot through the locks on doors when one barred their path, and soon they found themselves in a very odd place indeed.

"A mansion?" Heinkel said, looking at the flight of red carpeted stairs before her. They led up to a painting depicting a family of three and branched off to the left and right, the left looping around the back and joining the right side at a door.

"This is stupid. Who builds a mansion in a place like this?" Yumie said.

"Crazy people," Heinkel said. "Let's check around."

Heinkel gestured to the right side of the room, and made her way towards the back beneath the stairs on the left. When she reached the back, she could not have been more shocked at what she saw stuck to the wall on the stairwell side by green, sticky webbing.

Unconscious and limp, was Father Anderson. Both Heinkel and Yumie rushed towards him, fearing the worst and at the same time, wondering what in all creation could have done it.

"Father!" Heinkel said. "Father, wake up!"

Yumie sliced at the webbing holding him up while Heinkel gentle slapped his cheek. He groaned, much to their relief, and opened his eyes.

"What's this now?" he said. "What are you two doing here?"

They helped him remove the sticky webbing from his coat and limbs and propped him up as he got the numbness out of his legs. "We came to get you," Heinkel said. "We should leave now before something happens."

Anderson smiled and let out a short chuckle. "Ah, you're both as lazy as ever," he said. "There's some work to be done yet. Follow me, we're going up the stairs to see if we can't find some people who've got mixed up in this. There's also a freak that needs killing."

Looking at each other with apprehension and puzzlement, Heinkel and Yumie followed Anderson back to the foot of the stairs and were about to follow him up when the painting at the top swung open.

Heinkel saw Anderson's bayonets come out as a blond woman in a purple dress stepped out of the doorway behind the open painting. She was beautiful, with a regal posture and a bemused expression on her face.

"Father Alexander Anderson," she said. "You've become quite the pest. And now, you've got friends to aid you in your tiresomeness. I don't know who they are, and I don't care. Are you quite prepared to finally die?"

"Give us a break, lady," Yumie said. "There's three of us and one of you. You've got no chance; we can waste whatever ridiculous monster you decide to sic on us."

The woman began to walk down the stairs, slowly and deliberately. There was something almost dainty in her step, but Anderson began to back up, slowly, much to Heinkel and Yumie's concern.

Before Heinkel could ask what the matter was, the door behind them opened. Heinkel spun and gasped. It was Wesker, still in his black flight suit and sunglasses. "Alexia," he said, ignoring the trio of Vatican assassins. "I see you're awake. I've come to make you an offer."

Alexia stopped on the stairwell and cocked her head to the side. "Oh?"

"I work for a very powerful group," Wesker said. "If you'd come with me, I think your talents would be in a position to flourish."

"Excuse me," Yumie said, glaring at Wesker. "You're a jackass."

"I'm afraid the nun has the right of it," Alexia said. "Not a one of you has the slightest idea of what I am. I think the four of you will make a fine test of my abilities."

Alexia ran a fingernail across her wrist, making it bleed and waved at them with her bloody hand, spattering blood at the three Vatican agents. In mid air, the blood droplets burst into flame, making Yumie and Heinkel go diving for cover while Anderson ran forward under the flames with his bayonets.

Heinkel sat up and saw that Yumie was already making her charge at Wesker. Alexia might be trying to kill the lot of them, but that was no reason to cast their lot with demons and heathens simply for the sake of convenience. Taking aim at Wesker, she readied to fire if Yumie somehow failed to slice him into pieces.

Wesker jumped backward to avoid Yumie's swing and was cut, just barely, across his midsection. Only his flight suit seemed to have been injured, which Heinkel saw fit to try and change. She fired, both guns cracking, sending bullets at Wesker's head. Somehow, he was able to react to the gunfire and held up his forearm while he twisted and ducked.

Two shots struck his arm and another zipped past his head close enough to disturb his neat haircut. Scrambling backward, Wesker narrowly avoided a vertical strike from Yumie's sword, which forced him up against the door.

Heinkel shot a quick glance at the stairwell and saw that Anderson was slashing and stabbing at Alexia while she attempted to avoid his strikes. Even though she was ducking, the fact that her dress was in tatters and about to fall off told Heinkel she either wasn't quick enough, or was simply not overly concerned with being injured.

Turning back, she saw that Wesker's attention was still on Alexia. Gritting her teeth in anger, she fired at him again while Yumie made an attack at his legs.

There was a blur of motion from Wesker. He moved forward, towards Yumie, and put his shoulder into her, sending her into the air and sailing across the room where she broke the bottom part of the banister.

Heinkel kept shooting; this time there was no way Wesker could duck. Her bullets found his ribcage and hip, which they punched through easily, sending out washes of red blood.

Wesker grunted in pain as he fell and rolled onto his good side. He sat up as quickly as if he had been sucker punched in a fist fight. Heinkel stood her ground, knowing, hoping, his neck move would be to bum rush her from the front. If she was fast enough, she could put bullets into his chest and face. If not, she was going to get hurt.

His face was set into a grim line that was threatening to become an outright snarl. Heinkel licked her lips, feeling both fear and excitement. Wesker did just as she hoped, only a little faster than she wanted. Feeling the barrels of her pistols touch his chest, she squeezed the trigger as many times as she could and pushed them inward for good measure, hoping to stab him with the barrels somehow.

Whatever manner of attack he had planned on using to dispatch her was aborted when her guns clicked empty. Shoving her down, he backed up, holding his arms over his torso and grimacing. He cast one glance up at the stairwell, which now on fire, and spat in anger.

Heinkel ejected her clips to reload as Wesker turned and bolted towards the door, which he was through and gone by the time Heinkel's guns were reloaded. On her way over to check on Yumie, she met Anderson walking down the stairs.

"Got her," Anderson said. "Who was that man?"

"Where'd the bastard run off to!?" Yumie shouted, coming around the banister with a slight limp. "We can't let him escape!"

"He's long gone," Anderson said. "His time will come all the same. Follow me."

He went back up the stairs, past the dying fires created by Alexia's blood. "Are you alright?" Heinkel asked, looking at Yumie's leg.

"My ass hurts, but I'm alright," Yumie said. "I'd say she's the one who's hurting."

Alexia was on the ground, her dress in ruins, blood everywhere, with six bayonets pinning her corpse to the floor. "Looks like she was a lot of talk," Heinkel said. "Father, who exactly are we looking for?"

"You'll know them when you see them," Anderson said. "They won't try to kill you on sight."

"Oh," Heinkel said.

Anderson went through the open painting, first examining the picture itself and running his finger over one of the three jewels set into it. The picture looked to be of Alexia, her brother perhaps, and their father. Each one had been wearing a bit of jewelry and instead of paint, the actual jewel stood in. She couldn't guess what Anderson's fascination with it was.

Through the passage behind the painting seemed to be an extension of the mansion. With their primary enemies dead or run off, Heinkel allowed herself a tentative sigh of relief.

**To be continued…**


	15. Chapter 15

Author's note: apologies for the delay. New job, had to move 3 1/2 hours south, ect.

**Chapter Fifteen.**

After exploring a set of rooms that could only have been bedrooms for a man and a woman, separated by a stone relief in the wall which swung sideways like a door, Anderson huffed angrily.

"It's just like the mansion back on Rockfort," he said. "They're as crazy as they are amoral."

"Well, they're dead now, and that's what's important," Heinkel said. "Let's just hurry up and find your new friends so we can leave."

Even Yumie seemed to agree, looking at the elaborately decorated halls with clear distaste. "Fighting Umbrella's abominations hasn't been all it's been cracked up to be," she said. "It's not so much fun as it is aggravating and disgusting. They're not even heretics, they're either animals or atheists all together."

Heinkel agreed. Killing heretics in the name of Lord seemed to be Iscariot's divine purpose. Killing vampires was fine by extension, but this kind of work, the killing of genetic freaks, seemed to be stretching the terms of their job descriptions. She put it out of her mind, or tried to. It was Maxwell's job to decide such things. They were the bullets, Iscariot was the gun, and Maxwell was the shooter. She needn't be concerned with who he pointed them at or why.

Anderson stopped when he came to a hallway blocked by the same vine-like tentacles they had seen from the chopper coming in. "Well…this doesn't bode well," he said.

"Why not?" Yumie asked. "I'll slice through them in no time."

"No," Anderson said, holding a hand up. "I mean, yes, cut through them, but this means she isn't dead."

"Who, that woman?" Heinkel asked. "How do you know?"

Anderson poked a tentacle with his bayonet, making it slap at him. The blow knocked him back a few feet, and likely would have floored either Heinkel or Yumie, but he shook it off. "These are hers, or they _are_ her, I'm not sure which. Regardless, we haven't seen the last of the witch."

Yumie snarled and sliced the tentacle, putting a deep gash in it, making it retract. She did the same with the other as Heinkel and Anderson looked through the hole. At some point, likely while they were searching the bedrooms, Alexia's corpse had sprouted into a giant plant-like structure which now occupied the central part of the room they had battled in.

The flesh coloring, veins, and muscle undulations of the structure made Heinkel revise her opinion of it being plant-like. Whatever it really was, it was disgusting and alive. "How are we going to kill it?" Heinkel asked.

"We're not," Anderson said. "As much as I'd like to…I'd say this base is slated for a bombing by the Vatican, unless of course we find the self-destruct device."

Heinkel remembered that all Umbrella facilities were equipped with such a thing, and this one was likely no different, unless Alexia had thought to disable it.

Through the end of the hall was a place where prisoners were apt to be found. The walls were brick and the barred prison cells were rusted and damp. Inside the cell-lined hall, were the zombified remains of prisoners, which Heinkel shot to both put an end to their misery and cease their wailing.

The one door out of place was a large, steel shutter, which suddenly became noisy as someone started banging on it from the other side. "Help!" Came the voice of a woman. "In here!"

Anderson's bayonet stabbed through the lock, shorting it out. With one arm, he tugged upward on the bottom of the door, opening it. Inside was woman in jeans, a red vest with a black t-shirt, and brown hair tied back into a high ponytail. She looked tired and pale, but glad to see them otherwise. "You're alive," she said, looking at Anderson. "And you brought backup."

"Heinkel, Yumie, this is Claire Redfield. Claire, this is Heinkel Wolfe and Yumie Takagi. Where's Steven?"

Claire cast a quick glance behind her where a large portcullis blocked the cell she was in from a long hallway lined with suits of armor carrying giant battle axes. "He's down there, but I think he's hurt. I've been calling over to him, but he hasn't answered."

The three went into Claire's cell where Anderson set to bending the bars. Heinkel dug into her coat and pulled out a spare pistol. "Can you shoot?" she asked Claire.

Claire took the gun and checked it over, being careful not to point it at anyone. "I've had lots of practice," she said. "Thanks."

With the bars bent, the four of them jogged down the curiously elaborate pathway. At the end of it was a young man wearing fatigue pants sans his shirt. Pinning him to the wall was a battle axe which had been slammed through the concrete, making the wooden hilt a bar across his chest.

"Steve!" Claire shouted, as her and Anderson crowded around him while Yumie and Heinkel hung back. "Steve, wake up, wake up Steve." She was slapping his face and shaking him, while Anderson looked him over for wounds.

The man, or rather boy, Heinkel thought, groaned as his eyes fluttered open. "Claire," he said. "I…she injected me with…Claire I…"

Heinkel recognized the tone of a doomed man's voice and turned all of her attention on him, an uneasy feeling suddenly coming over her. Something was wrong with the boy, that was certain. He was writhing and groaning, flexing his muscles and…growing larger.

As his convulsions became more violent, Anderson and Claire backed up, as did Heinkel and Yumie. As the boy's body grew, it began to change. His head slumped forward, allowing his back to hunch up while his arms extended and became reptilian and clawed. As his legs popped and bent the other way like an animal's, he stood, popping the axe out of the wall.

The worst change was the boy's face. It became green, his eyes turning blood red and his mouth twisting into an angry snarl. Perhaps the lack of change was the worst part, as anyone could recognize his features and tell that he was once human.

"Steve…" Claire said, raising her pistol. Heinkel's estimation of the woman rose dramatically. She had expected an idiot civilian, innocent to bloodshed and harsh realities. Clearly, she cared for this Steve person, but was still able to kill the inhuman abomination he had become.

Steve let out a howl of rage and picked up the battle axe as Heinkel and Claire opened fire. Heinkel knew that their weapons would only serve to annoy such a large, virus induced creature, and hoped they would be enough of a distraction for Anderson and Yumie to slice him to pieces.

Steve swung across with his axe, nearly slicing both Anderson and Yumie in two. Yumie ducked while Anderson jumped. As soon as he hit the floor, Anderson threw one bayonet into Steve's face and rushed him. Yumie, meanwhile, struck at his axe, cutting it in two.

Anderson stabbed upward with the bayonet, putting it through the bottom of Steve's jaw and up through his head. With a hard backhanded swat, Steve sent both Yumie and Anderson crashing into a suit of armor before falling forward.

Keeping her pistols up, Heinkel watched Claire rush over to Steve, who seemed to be shrinking. She rolled his naked body over and began crying, pulling the bayonets out of his head.

Seeing that Anderson had broken Yumie's fall, Heinkel allowed herself to pity Claire and Steve. Most people wanted to have touching last words with their fallen comrades, but more often than not, all they got was a bloody mess to cry over, and in this poor girl's case, a skull to pull bayonets from.

Heinkel didn't know how Claire had become mixed up in such things, but it reaffirmed her belief that civilians should just let the warriors do the work. Perhaps exterminating Umbrella's freaks was the Lord's work after all, Heinkel thought. Whatever cut down on the number of scenes like the one playing out before her would be fine by Heinkel.

A tremor shook the building as Yumie stood by Heinkel's side and Anderson stooped to comfort Claire, who flinched at his touch. "We have to go," he said. "Help us look for the auto-destruct system. You had experience with it in Raccoon, so help us cleanse this place and give Steven's soul some peace."

Claire reigned in her sobs and stood. "I think there's a door at the other end of the prison," she said. "Something like an auto-destruct might be through there. If it's not, I don't know where it else it could be."

Heinkel removed her long coat, after taking the spare clips out of it, and covered Steve's body with it. She prayed quietly, both for his soul and for her not to go outside without first finding another coat.

**To be continued…**


	16. Chapter 16

Chapter Sixteen

**Chapter Sixteen.**

At the other end of the prison, the scene underwent another architectural shift that seemed to be common with buildings made by Umbrella. Heinkel now found herself, along with the others, back in a modern facility walking up a flight of mesh stairs to a mesh platform. Quite a departure from the medieval dungeon they had left in the room adjacent.

At the top of the platform, which occupied the bottom of a giant shaft, was a door too high-tech for it's own good, Heinkel thought. There were blinking red lights up the side and a dragonfly-shaped key hole. Too fancy to have so much as a doorknob, Heinkel wondered how they were going to open it.

Her question was answered when Anderson drove his bayonets into the lock, doing as much damage to it as he did his blades. A nasty jolt went through his body, but the door snapped open much harder than it was supposed to, and Anderson let go of the blades, letting them stick in the lock.

He pulled two more from his coat, an act which Heinkel always found bizarre and unnerving. Granted, it was a miracle from God, but still, seeing it was something else.

Claire seemed weirded out by it as well, but went through the door first. Her head snapped to the side and she quickly fired three times, each shot accompanied by three wet thumps. Heinkel saw the three dead zombies she had killed in the next room as they entered. This one was a large warehouse, with a shutter door at the far end. Heinkel thought it might be a good place to leave from, so long as they could get down to the warehouse floor from the raised part they were currently occupying.

"This must be it," Claire said, walking over to the elaborate control panel overlooking the warehouse floor. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a plastic swipe card. "I found this on a body of a guy who was dressed like he was important," she said. "I thought the card might be important too."

Heinkel and Yumie exchanged looks of deep concern. The odds that the card she had happened across in her travels having anything to do with the autodestruct were extremely slim. Heinkel swallowed hard and prayed for some divine intervention on their behalf, which she got when the machine Claire swiped the card through made a positive beeping sound.

"That was it," she said. "I guess this must be the code it wants…" she began punching keys and looking at the back of the card. The last key, the enter button, set red lights flashing across the room and initiated a loud blaring horn.

The self-destruct sequence has been activated. All personnel are to execute evacuation protocols. The self-destruct sequence has been activated. All personnel are to…

The voice was female with a heavy mechanical tint to it. _Just how an auto-destruct warning voice should sound,_ Heinkel thought. "I think we can leave down that way," Heinkel said, pointing to a ladder that lead down to the floor bellow.

They all moved quickly towards the ladder, with Anderson standing aside to usher the three women down while he went last. It was a high, simple ladder which made Heinkel nervous. If the base began to explode while they were on it, the tremors would be apt to shake them off.

They reached the bottom safely and began running towards the shutter door on the other end, which to Heinkel's delight was raised up a few feet and would allow them to slip easily beneath it.

_To the outside, where I'll freeze,_ she thought. _God, let that helicopter pilot find us fast once I call him._

As they neared freedom, a humanoid figure stepped out from behind a pile of crates. At first, Heinkel thought it was a zombie, the light from the door behind it obscuring its features. It was walking too gracefully to be a zombie, and once they were closer, she could see that it wasn't Wesker.

The foursome stopped once they saw what it was. It was female, only bizarre lumps of flesh covered its head instead of hair, and a kind of thick, scale-ish armor had grown up one side of her, covering one breast and her lower half.

Outside of the blazing yellow eyes, Heinkel recognized the features of Alexia, the woman Anderson had bayoneted earlier. _So she's alive,_ Heinkel thought.

With a wave of her hand, a wall of fire sprung up behind them. How she had done it without igniting her blood, Heinkel didn't know. Perhaps Alexia simply wanted to toy with them instead of incinerating them outright; in any case, they were in trouble.

Heinkel fired, putting two bullets in Alexia's head. She staggered backward and began to…boil. Heinkel and the others watched in disgust and amazement as her body seemed to become liquid and churn, growing larger.

As she grew and formed into a puddle of fleshy ooze, they were forced to back up, closer to wall of fire behind them. The creature that was Alexia kept transforming, turning into a mound filled with tentacles and holes, which began spawning crawling, insectoid things with whip-like appendages on their backs.

From the top of the mound, which Heinkel was already thinking was a kind of living hive, sprouted a torso. Part Alexia, part dragonfly, the winged thing let out a shriek before spitting a stream of green acid towards Anderson, who dived out of the way before it hit.

Heinkel decided to make her job to eradicate the crawling pests on the ground, which were making their way quickly towards their feet. The size of a small cat, Heinkel wasn't sure how dangerous the things were, but didn't care to find out the hard way. She began firing at them as Anderson ran at Alexia, having no fear of what she could do to him.

Claire followed Heinkel's lead and began shooting at Alexia's spawn. Her aim wasn't as good though, and one of them struck at her leg with the whip on its back, leaving a cut on her leg.

Yumie speared the thing with her sword and flung it away. She then bolted around towards the back of the Alexia monster, counting on Anderson's frontal assault to bear the brunt of her more lethal attacks.

One of the little monster's leaped at her, forcing her to duck. She kicked one that had gotten too close and kept firing, trying in vain to keep them from swarming her. Heinkel ran towards Claire, firing at the ones after her while trying to put some distance between herself and the creature's swarming her.

Claire was backing up as well, the monsters crawling from Alexia's body were swiftly becoming too much for the both of them. They were able to regroup near the door and start firing again. Heinkel began to wonder if it wouldn't be a good idea to simply leave through the gap in the door. If it got hit, it might fall and trap them. The facility was also supposed to explode at some point as well.

Anderson was driving his bayonets into the monster's torso, while it vomited acid down over his back. Yumie was behind it, slashing viciously at it as well. Neither would have the sense to quit and let the impending explosion do its work, Heinkel knew, and she wasn't about to leave them.

"Take this," Heinkel shouted, handing Claire her radio. "Go out and radio our helicopter. Mention my name."

Claire took the radio and was about to protest, but Heinkel was shoving her towards the door, not giving the opportunity. With Claire outside, Heinkel ran around the swarm before her and began shooting at the large monster's face.

Alexia let out a shriek and began to beat her wings furiously. With a ripping sound, her torso detached from the dying mound and she rose into the air with Anderson clinging onto his bayonets which had been stuck in her chest. His back was covered in smoldering acid burns, making Heinkel worry for him.

Heinkel now too aim at the wings, putting all of her effort into accurately hitting them. Her gun clicked empty as she shot the two wings on Alexia's left side off, making her fall to the ground.

Yumie didn't miss a beat. As soon as she as on the ground, Yumie's sword had her head off and in two pieces. Heinkel rushed over to Anderson and pulled him free of the dead monstrosity. His coat and shirt slid off, the back half missing due to the acid. The remnants of it even managed to burn Heinkel a bit, but as soon as Yumie was clear of the mess she had made, she helped Heinkel drag Anderson out from beneath the door and into the freezing weather outside.

"Father!" Heinkel shouted. "Say something."

Anderson shakily stood, the look on his face as manic as it had ever been. "Finally, a battle," he said. "Ah, it was worth it."

Claire was standing about fifty meters down the cement path, shouting and waving. Heinkel thought she could hear the chopper, but her ears were about to freeze off, or so it felt. "Great, let's get out of this place and go somewhere warm," she said, helping Yumie to pull Anderson along towards Claire.

**To be continued… **


	17. Chapter 17

Chapter Seventeen

**Chapter Seventeen.**

The helicopter was airborne when the base exploded. The cabin shook and tilted, making Heinkel and the others have to hang on to keep from sliding to the floor. Anderson got up from his seat and went to the cockpit, where he shouted something to the pilot.

The chopper circled the base twice to make sure the Alexia creature was dead and that nothing was going to crawl from the rubble and cause any more trouble. After they were reasonably certain, they flew off. Heinkel closed her eyes and relaxed, glad to finally be able to rest for a few moments.

Opening one eye, she could see that Yumie had gone to sleep. When she awoke, it was likely Yumiko would be back and asking questions about what had happened. Anderson was asleep as well, but would likely wake soon. Claire seemed to hold a vacant expression, likely thinking about her friend, Steve.

After an hour, the chopper set down on a boat, where they were escorted to private quarters. Claire didn't know it, but her room was placed under guard; for the time being, she was a prisoner. It would be up to Maxwell to decide what to do with her. Anderson's mission had been to dig up information on Umbrella to use against it. Either the info would be used to take legal action against them, or it would used to plan tactical assaults for covert operations aimed at killing its employees.

If Maxwell opted to wage a secret war on Umbrella, or continue it at least, Claire probably wouldn't be heard from again unless she convinced the Iscariot head that she wasn't going to be a hindrance. On the other hand, Claire's chances were much better if Maxwell decided to attack Umbrella from the public sphere.

_The Pope might step in, too,_ Heinkel thought. _He's got the final say, of course. Hopefully, they'll her go on her way._ She knew little of Claire Redfield, but from what she had seen, Claire was worthy of respect. Anderson seemed to like her, so that said something as well.

Heinkel slept like a dead log once she hit the bed in her quarters. All four of them had to go through a thorough delousing not long after getting off the chopper. Lord only knew what kind of microscopic horrors had clung to her while she was cavorting around Umbrella's labs. None of them had been happy about it, but Claire had seemed the most distraught. Apparently she had never been deloused before.

Several hours later, Heinkel found herself standing with Yumiko in an office building in Southern Italy. It had taken two cab rides and an airplane ride to get there, but even so, Heinkel feed an odd sense of being disconnected. Going from Rockfort to the Antarctic and now back to civilization was like traveling to a different place and time. She knew nothing was going to jump out and attack her while she walked down the hallway, but her reflexes didn't; her arms twitched even when a young man, an intern by the look of him, came out a door carrying a stack of papers.

She got to the room Maxwell was sitting in without shooting anyone. His silver hair was tied back as usual, and he looked pleased with them, which was not usual. "Heinkel, Yumiko, I'm glad you made it back, along with Anderson. I understand you had something of an ordeal?"

Yumiko nodded and looked at Heinkel, the only person who could give a full account aside from Anderson himself. "It wasn't that bad, but there were some close call," Heinkel said. "Anderson is alive and well, so mission accomplished for us."

"Anderson didn't fare so badly either," Maxwell said, picking up a cup of tea setting on his desk. "He managed to send us some information that will be useful in annihilating Umbrella."

Heinkel's heart sank. "So then we're going to kill them all?"

Maxwell sipped his tea. "And then some. We'll crush them financially and legally as well. I'm also interested in what the Redfield woman has to tell us as well. I understand she was a Raccoon City survivor, so the tactical information we glean from her and from our own experience will be substantial."

The lump in her stomach hadn't quite disappeared, but it did shrink. "So she'll be let go?"

A puzzled look crossed Maxwell's face. "Is there some reason we should keep her?"

"Um, no," Heinkel said. "I was just…"

"You thought we'd torture information out of her, kill her, and then dump her in a river someplace, right? I'm surprised at you Heinkel, you know we hardly ever do that anymore. Not to random people, anyway." He sipped his tea and kept his eyes fixed on her. They were calm and easy eyes, not his maniacal ones, the kind he got when he was worked up about something. It was likely their success had put him in a good mood.

"So, then," Heinkel said. "Should we take it easy and await more orders?"

"We're quite tired," Yumiko said, chiming in.

"I suppose you've earned a rest, which you should make the most of, as you're headed to Egypt in four days."

"Egypt?" Heinkel and Yumiko said in unison.

"Egypt. Umbrella is planning to have one of its new testing facilities go online by the end of the week. It's poorly guarded and ripe for an old fashioned bombing. Assuming, of course, you don't find a way to make use of its self-destruct system."

Heinkel fought the urge to pass out. She'd had enough of zombie and mutants to last her a lifetime. Furthermore, she didn't care for Egypt at all. There was too much sand. "Can't you just send Anderson?" Heinkel asked. "He was complaining about not getting challenges enough. I heard him."

Maxwell shook his head, putting his tea down. "Hellsing is on the move against Umbrella as well. I've got a job for Anderson, a special one. We can't let the Protestants upstage on this one."

They both sighed. Heinkel was about to ask if they simply couldn't let Hellsing do the dirty work, especially since their goals were the same, but it was no use with Maxwell so she stifled her words. "Alright then," Heinkel said. "I'll have Yumiko write up the report, after I tell her what happened."

"What?" Yumiko shouted. "Not again!"

"Yes, again. Yumie and I do all the work, it's only fair you should write the reports."

"M-Maxwell, sir, tell her…"

Rolling his eyes, Maxwell waved his hands as though shooing them out. "Just go away. Remember, Egypt, four days."

Heinkel turned and left, tuning out Yumiko as she followed behind, complaining loudly about being taken advantage of.

The room Claire sat in was probably the oddest thing she had seen in both Raccoon City and the places she had been in the last forty-eight hours. It was a prison cell, but the only thing that made it such was the bars on the door. Everything else, aside from the lack of a window, indicated a posh hotel room.

The chair she was sitting in was one of the most comfortable things she had ever encountered. With the mini-bar within arm's length, she was finding it a chore to be angry at the Vatican for holding her against her will.

"Father Anderson," the guard said. "What are you…"

"Open it," Anderson said. The guard came in to view, a geeky looking priest, and opened the cell door. Anderson had to dip his head slightly when he walked in. "Ms. Redfield," he said, nodding.

She narrowed her eyes. "Father. What brings you along? Come to interrogate me or something?"

Shaking his head, he sat down on the edge of the bed across from her. To look at him, she would never have guessed the ordeal he had gone through. Aside from the scar on his cheek, which was there when she met him, there wasn't a scratch on him. "No, no one is going to interrogate you," Anderson said. "I expect you'll have no trouble telling them what they want to know right from the start. They'll ask you about Raccoon mostly. How you came to be stuck on Rockfort might also come up, but if you tell them you were looking for your brother and got captured when you stuck your nose in too deep, that should suffice."

Claire scratched behind her ear nervously. The remaining STARS members had formed a kind of anti-Umbrella group and were gathering to launch an assault. What the Vatican's interest in that might be, Claire wasn't sure and wasn't all too trusting. "Why does Section Thirteen treat everyone like they're the enemy?" Claire asked.

He grinned and laughed. "Survival. There's no power in the world that's got to where it is by being friendly and benevolent. Ask Umbrella."

She wanted to ask him what the difference between Umbrella and the Iscariots were, but didn't. "Why are you here?" she asked instead.

His grin faded and his eyes softened. It was almost grotesque how quickly his demeanor could change and further reinforced Claire's conclusion that he was insane. "I wanted to say that I'm sorry about Steven," he said. "Not for what I did, mind you, but that it had to happen."

"I'm sorry too," she said. She had spent her first night in Hotel Iscariot crying into her pillow. Completely shed of tears, her sadness had now become a burning anger. Another glowing coal in the pile her ordeal in Raccoon had created. "He was only seventeen."

"He's with the Lord now," Anderson said. "I also came to ask if you would be willing to help us."

"Help you?"

"Maxwell, the head of Iscariot, wants to use you against them. You can provide us with tactical information on their bioweapons, as well as testify against them in a court," Anderson said. "You've also got some potential as a warrior. With a little training, you'd be a right terror."

Claire shook her head. "I'm not becoming a…a, killer nun or whatever. After Umbrella is buried I'm finishing college and getting a life."

"I'm not asking you to take any vows," he said. "Heinkel and Yumiko are off to Egypt in a few days to destroy an Umbrella testing facility. They're good, but they could do with some help, and I'll be tied up in something else."

Closing her eyes and sighing, she felt the aches and pains of the past two days begin to throb again. The Aspirin had done its work, but the memory was powerful. Part of her wanted to quit the whole mess and go back to college like nothing had happened, but it was a small part.

"I'll go," she said. "As long as I'm well armed and there's a plan of some kind." Too many times, twice to be exact, she had been up against Umbrella without a clue and few bullets.

"Good. Heinkel and Yumiko, Yumie at least, will look out for you. They'll never admit it, but I think they've taken a shine to you."

Claire was surprised by that, but didn't show it. "I still need to find my brother."

"Maxwell might help you with that in exchange," Anderson said. "He's been in a good mood lately. I'd get assurances before that changes."

Already she was having reservations about helping Iscariot. The bars she sat behind left her with little choice, she thought. Having never been to Egypt, she wasn't sure exactly how feasible slipping away quietly would be once the facility was up in smoke, but she guessed she could play it by ear. "Send him by sometime," Claire said. "I'd like to meet this Maxwell person. I hear about him enough."

"Right then. Go with God, child," Anderson said, getting up. As he left, Claire rolled her eyes. For a moment, she had thought Anderson had seriously come by to talk with her about Steve, but it had been nothing more than a recruitment drive.

"Egypt," Claire said. "I guess I always wanted to see the pyramids."

**The End. **


End file.
